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MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

“nanook of the north”

NANOOK THE BEAR

ESKIMO FRIENDS

“NANOOK OF THE NORTH”

ROBERT J. FLAHERTY, F. R. G. S.

IN COLLABORATION WITH

FRANCES HUBBARD FLAHERTY

ILLUSTRATED WITH
PHOTOGRAVURES AND COLOR PLATES
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR

HALFTONE DRAWINGS BY
ESKIMO ARTISTS AND MAPS

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

1924

^OLVAY PUBLIC LiBhak

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

First Edition

MY FATHER

The Discovery
Islands .

CONTENTS

PART I

PACE

AND Exploration of the Belcher
i

PART II

Winter on Wetalltok’s Island 49

PART III

The Exploration of Northern Ungava ... 77

Films .

PART IV

117

COLOUR ILLUSTRATIONS
Nanook the Bear Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

Nyla 98

Nanook the Harpooner 146

HALFTONES

Off from the Wintering Base on a Sledge Trip . . 26

Eskimo Hunting Walrus 42

Goose Hunting 66

Eskimo Hunting Scenes 90

Hunting Nanook (the bear) 130

The Artist and His Signature — Wetalltok .... 154

LIST OF PHOTOGRAVURE PLATES

FACING PAGE

The Hunter i8

Eskimo Omiak in the Spring 34

Tooktoo (The Deer) 58

Allegoo (Shining Water) 74

Nascaupie Indian Chief 82

Nyla and Child 106

The Walrus Hunter 114

The Youthful Hunter 122

The Barren Lands 138

MAPS

A Detail Map of Two Routes followed by Mr. Flaherty
Hudson Bay and the Fictionary Belcher Islands .
Hudson Bay and the Real Belcher Islands

Route of the Schooner Laddie

Map of the Belcher Islands

A Seventeenth Century Map of Hudson Bay.

PART I

THE DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION
OF THE BELCHER ISLANDS

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MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

HE Government of Canada, in 1910, decided to con-

struct a railway from the wheatfields of the west to

the west coast of Hudson Bay in order to provide an

outlet for the shipment of wheat through Hudson Bay and
Hudson Strait to Europe. Sir William Mackenzie, whose
railway, the Canadian Northern, was then in the initial stages
of its construction across the continent, decided to investi-
gate the seaboard of Hudson Bay for iron ore. He reasoned
that if the shipment of wheat could be successfully carried
out, iron ore as well could be shipped to the great markets
of the world.

Sir William, in August, 1910, commissioned the writer to
undertake an exploration of the Nastapoka Islands, outlying
the east coast of Hudson Bay. Upon certain islands of the
group, iron ore was reported to occur.

Through the great hinterland of Quebec and Ontario my
father^ had carried on, from the time that I was a boy, ex-
tensive explorations for iron ore. With his engineers and
prospectors I grew up on explorations whose range, east and
west, was more than a thousand miles. Long journeys some
of them seemed to be then — through the courses of un-

*Robert H. Flaherty, who during his lifetime was the foremost figure in the iron ore
exploration of Canada.

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

mapped lakes and streams, over the height of land and on
halfway down the big tumbling rivers whose ends are on
Hudson Bay. Hudson Bay was mysterious country. The
grizzled old fur traders and the fur brigades of strange In-
dians, curiously garbed, with hair shoulder-long, whom we
sometimes ran into, seemed to be people of another world.

Crew and outfit were modest enough. Crundell, a young
Englishman, for the first stage of the journey was my sole
companion. A seventeen-foot “Chestnut,” beans, bacon,
bannock, dried fruit, and tea, the usual grub supply of north-
country men, a few simple Instruments, and a carbine Win-
chester, comprised the outfit.

We jumped off for the North from a tiny settlement out-
lying the northern Ontario frontier. Ground Hog by name,
whose only reason for being was that it was a temporary
rail end pending the bridging by the Grand Trunk Pacific
of the Ground Hog River, upon the stump-scarred banks of
which it stood.

Down the silent, sombrely forested courses of the little
Ground Hog,into the big Mattagaml,and on into the smooth,
swift, mile-wide mirror of the Moose was only five days’
travel, for though the distance was nearly two hundred
miles, the rivers were high and flowing strong.

The rugged granites over which the Mattagami breaks,
long “saults,” smoking falls, and canyon-slots through the
hills, give way about halfway down to a vast muskeg plain
which extends for the remainder of the river courses to the
sea — a great desolate waste, treeless save along the margins
of lakes and streams. Unbrokenly level, in Devonian times,
as the fossils in the limestone of its underlying formation

THE BELCHER ISLANDS

show, it was the floor of the now distant sea. Through it
the Mattagami, a deep groove, loops and winds.

Wide scars of brulee, chafing tangles of tree trunks barked
and bleached by the weather, alternated with live forests of
sombre fir, silver birches, and long-stemmed, sea-green
groves of poplar. Huge portions of it, undermined by the
icefields of break-up time in spring and by the floods of high-
water season, lay avalanched in chaos on the lower slopes.
Trunks, branches, and foliage of the wreckage swayed like
dead heads at midstream.

There was little wild life. The raucous cries of wheeling
gulls, the “quawk, quawk” of wood duck, were infrequent
enough to be startling. Even in the forest places, the cawing
of some “Whisky Johnny” for bitsof bannock and bacon
rind, and the forlorn cries of “Poor Canada” were the only
sounds. Of natives we saw only signs — gaunt tepee frames,
sleeping patches of weather-rusted boughs, and here and
there poles that, as they inclined upstream or down, pointed
out the travellers’ direction; or message sticks bearing scrolls
of birch bark covered with charcoal writing in the mission-
ary’s syllabic Cree.

The Moose begins, impressively large, where the Mis-
sanabe from the west and the Mattagami meet. By night-
fall it broadened to three miles. The forests of either shore
gave way to dreary wastes of muskeg and to spectres of
solitary wind-shapen trees. Seaward were long leaden lanes
and smoky haze and the mirage of islands in the sky.

On the river’s last large island, we reached the great fur
stronghold of the North, two and a half centuries old. Moose
Factory — an enchanting panorama enchantingly unwinding

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

—tepees, overturned canoes, green cultivated fields, mea-
dows, hayricks, grazing cattle, prim cottages and rough-
hewn cabins, a little old church with a leaning red tow&r,
and in formal array, red-roofed, weather-worn post buildings.

A few curious half-breeds and their wives stood at the
edge of the bank as we climbed from the landing. The men
slouched, hands in pockets, gazed intently, and the women,
in the abashed manner of the country, peered from the hooded
depths of their plaid shawls. In the background a group of
Indian women and their children lingered furtively. Dogs
innumerable, enervated by the warmth of sun, lay sprawled
on the green — short-haired Indian curs, and here and there a
splendid husky from the barrens of the Eskimos far north-
ward. On the green stood an elaborately staged flagpole
flanked by two old bronze field guns; adjacent, the trade
shop, over its entrance the Company’s emblazoned coat of
arms; and deep-set from the green an old three-storied fur
warehouse, alongside of it the forge of the armourer and the
boatyards of the shipwrights and carpenters; and facing
them all the master’s white red-roofed mansion with dormer
windows and a deep encircling veranda.

With the post officers — they wore informal tweeds and
white collars — we dined in the messroom of the mansion,
where a moccasined Indian served us from a sideboard array
of old silver plate. Travel on the river, the high or low water,
and such countryside topics as the approaching goose-
hunting time “Hannah Bay way,” Tom Pant’s silver foxes.
Long Mary’s good-for-nothing husband, and, of course,
what the free-traders were doing, were the topics of conver-
sation. We were somewhat nonplussed that none showed

THE BELCHER ISLANDS

more than a perfunctory interest in news from the frontier
or concern for the mail we had brought — toward the latter
not half the avidity one of us would display toward a morn-
ing paper. It must be remembered, however, that most of
these men are recruited in their teens from the Old Country.
Growing up in the service from clerk apprenticeships, they
become inured to the monotony of post life, its staid con-
ventions and narrow, unchanging rounds of duty. One
interest predominates — the Indian hunter and his fur.

Our host informed us that the chief factor was at Charlton
Island, some seventy miles out in the Bay. With him we
would have to make arrangements for further stages of
travel up the Bay from Charlton. We were provided with
an open “York” boat and a crew, one Captain John Puggie,
a half-breed post servant, and three upland Indians, one of
whom (but not distinguishable save that he was sulkier) was
Chief of the Moose River Crees. The Indians with their
moccasins and hooded trade capotes, belted thrice around
with varicoloured sashes, looked anything but seamen.

We weighed anchor under lowering sky and rising wind,
but as we sailed the estuary’s channels, twelve winding miles
to sea, we had eyes for nothing but the wildfowl around us.
Before our thrashing sails, outspread like flails, in panic and
alarm they rose in multitudes — wheeling gulls, skimming
yellowlegs, darting plover; squawking wood duck, teal, and
mallard, that, flying low, would circle us; and from willow-
hidden ponds, with a clash and clamour and clumsy tattoo,
geese, wildly honking as they climbed awkwardly toward the
sky.

Not until we rounded the outer bar did we see the ugly

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

leer in the sky behind us. In a moment more we were stand-
ing out among the turbid reaches of the open bay; the faint
gray stippling of upland trees, the sweeps of the delta plain,
and the tawny rims of shoreline were lost to view, and walls
of rain, flayed by a gale piping through the cordage of
creaking spars and wailing above the slosh and hiss and din
of the seas around, lashed us, Indians and white men, who
grouped for shelter in the open hold. We peered with dismay
from the lost shelter of the outer bar to the tumbling steamy
wastes ahead, but old Puggie, donning oilers and sou’wester,
grimly smiled the fact that we were caught, and settled down
to the helm for a day of it. With only a sweep to hold her —
the rudder, torn from its pintles, was swept away — Puggie
landed us on the Island before nightfall.

CHARLTON ISLAND is the deep-sea anchorage of
the Hudson’s Bay Company’s fur ship which an-
nually comes out from England. Here, in summer,
is the rendezvous for fur men from hundreds of miles around,
who come with their half-breed servants and Indian crews in
small “York” boats for their year’s mail and goods for their
post trade. The place was thronged when we arrived, for
the fur ship lately come had cleared again for England. A
young Scotchman, just apprenticed to the trade, played his
bagpipe to the delight and wonder of the visiting Indians,
half-breed longshoremen, and a group of Eskimo migrants of
years before from the far-off barrens of the Great Whale
Coast, three dumpy little men, their solemn-faced wives, and
bashful troop of miniature Jap children. There was also a
grizzled white-haired old factor just returned from his first
furlough in thirty years; the company’s Arctic pilot who had
lately navigated a Danish brig through the icefields of
Hudson Strait; and the master, mate, and crew of the
above-mentioned brig, which, badly wracked by ice, now lay
abandoned half-heeled on the beach hard by. Her master,
pulling on his long pipe of porcelain, habitually paced the
wharf in clattering sabots, deeply distressed over his good
ship’s inglorious end.

When I explained to the chief factor my plan of travelling
northward, to my dismay he said that such a journey at this

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

late season would be impossible. Snow squalls were already
flying, while in the country of my destination winter was
even now at hand. We could only wait at Charlton until a
schooner came along, then proceed northward along the
coast to Fort George, winter there, and upon formation of
the first sea ice, continue north by sledge with Eskimos.

The journey to Fort George, though less than two hundred
miles, took ten days to make, for head winds held us weather-
bound at various of the islands — small, treeless, moss-
covered granite domes that mask the desolate “East Main.”
The excitement of goose-hunting amongst them, the calls of
the crew, the lure to firing range, the volleys, the plunge of
the kill, and, finally, the goose-roasting supper fires at eve-
ning— we spitted them on sticks — were memorable experi-
ences.

Snow was flying and ice gripped the rails, deck, and rigging
when we reached Fort George. The factor gave me the best
he had by way of food and shelter and arranged that as soon
as the sea ice should form, I was to have dogs, sledge, and two
drivers for the next stage of travel northward.

By mid-November, heavy frost was in the air. The
mouth of the river was soon sealed, and the ponderous banks
of mist and rime over the open sea drew daily farther away
as the ice edge crept out. Then came snow, the winter’s
first big “drifter,” and for three days there was no land or
sea or sky.

With winter come, the decrepit walls of the old post
buildings were soon banked eave-high in a masonry of snow
as thick as the walls of fortresses. From the entrance of
the factor’s mansion extended a long passage of snow blocks

THE BELCHER ISLANDS

head high. The servants’ nondescript summer garb gave
place to thick capotes of white moleskin, khaki, and blue
Stroud, trimmed at hood and cuff with fur of otter, mink, or
marten.

The dogs, starving prowlers of summer, now insolently
thriving, overran the post, thieving among the provision
sheds and at kitchen doors, in concert howling to the clang-
ing of the post bell, and at nightfall, around the huge kettle
full of steaming cornmeal and tallow as the “dog man”
cooked it over a leaping fire in the post yard, fighting mur-
derously like wolves. Unsheltered from the drift they slept
in moulds melted by their own body heat, all but their black-
tipped muzzles blanketed in snow.

Hungry coasters came filtering into the post during the
first week in December, bringing little or no fur, so the factor
complained, but with the usual tales of want and distress on
their hungry lips. Their coming was the sign that the sea
ice was sufficiently safe for travel.

My outfit, long since prepared, was soon assembled in the
post yard. Two drivers, nothing if not picturesque in their
fur-trimmed capotes, silk-worked gauntlets, elbow long, and
leggings of blue stroud, edged with red and bound at the
knees with beadwork garters, bustled here and there among
the throng of onlookers, harnessing dogs and stringing traces
to the sledge, while the factor advised me as to camping
ground and native shelters, and the missionary gave me
little notes of introduction, written in syllabic Cree, to vari-
ous of his flock whom I might meet along the way. With
the dogs howling and straining and leaping to their trace ends
my drivers made a hurried inspection of the sledge load’s

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

binding; then, waving the throng aside, unlimbered their
long cracking lash, and we were away, helter-skelter, to the
embankment edge and half tumbling to the river ice below.

From where our course lay, far out on the ice at sea, we
often sighted tepee smoke spiralling above some sheltered
little wood. The team, when they gained the scent, would
race madly toward it, plunge over the jagged tidal ice in full
career, and burst into the encampment clearing only to en-
gage with the Indians’ dog army in a melee of fighting. The
inhabitants, appearing from tepee entrances with sticks,
whips, or snowshoes, or whatever they could throw, added
to the din in their efforts at separation. The fighting over,
they would lend a hand with my luggage and bundle me
into some cracking firelit tepee interior. The housewives,
vying with one another, would scurry about to fetch me
clean spruce-bough bedding, to dust the snow from my fur
with their willow brooms, to heap fresh fuel upon the fire, to
fetch in clean snow for the “tea snow melting,” and so on
down to the last detail concerning my comfort their watch-
ful eyes could see.

The hunters from the other tepees would crawl in after the
meal and lounge with us within the red light of the great
evening fire. They would have me believe that they merely
came for a yarn or two with my drivers and news of encamp-
ments and the post, but I could see from their appraising
glances that what concerned them most was myself — why
I came and whither I was bound. My driver’s reply that I
was making this long journey for no other purpose than to
see an island of “iron rocks” far north in the “raw meat
eaters” land sent them into peals of laughter. The ex-

Tht Geographical Review, Vol. VI, No. 2, 1918, Pi VII

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THE BELCHER ISLANDS

1 1

planation that from the “iron rocks” are made their guns,
knives, and axes, was of no avail, for the making of such in-
explicable things they link with a higher power and let it go
at that.

We all slept as one large family, men, women, cradled
babes, and children in a circle about the fire, sometimes to be
wakened by the wail of some restless child, or by the torrent
of imprecations when some wolf-muzzled brute, having
chewed a hole through the tepee door, made a desperate
sally upon the larder. The vents in the tepee’s cone were
large enough (one could see patches of starlit sky beyond) to
clear the smoke pall from the dying fire and keep us in cold,
fresh air.

Gradually, as we drew out of the Indian’s country, the
forests gave way to dwarfed and more straggled clumps of
trees, and the monotony of the low-lying coast was broken
abruptly by a westward sweep of snow-smoking, kettle-
shaped hills — the peninsula of Cape Jones — the beginning of
the semi-barrens of the Eskimo.

We had an up-hill and down-dale journey of it over the
Cape — up long steep hills that our tired team could hardly
climb, or coasting in wild career and galloping over the disks
of tiny lakes that lay between. On the crest of the last high
hill, from my drivers came the exclamation, “Huskies!”
(Eskimos) and I made out three squares of yellow light
within the deepest hollow of the hills.

Three men, their wives, and a troop of wide-eyed children
who looked like young bear cubs in their shaggy fur clothing
came out to meet us as we galloped down toward them.
They were all of them post-trained Eskimos, as their in-

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

congruous combination of trade clothes and native fur
costumes bespoke — native deerskin parkas, the traders’
moleskin trousers, sealskin boots, and trade caps, much too
small for their bulging crops of hair. The women wore
native trousers of deerskin and parkas of trade cloth edged
with red, blue, and yellow tapes with pewter beads and
spoons and large Canadian pennies dangling and jingling
from the ends of them. One woman— but this was sheer
opulence — wore over her shaggy fur trousers a tattered skirt
of gingham.

With one Wetunik, headman of the encampment, my
drivers arranged for a new relay, two Eskimos, sledge, and
dogs for me, and within the hour turned back for the nearest
Indian camp to southward. Though a stranger in a strange
land, for I could speak no Eskimo, I experienced less in-
convenience than might be imagined, so much can one do
by way of signs, pantomime, and waving arms. The whole
encampment — men, women, and children — turned to, to help
me make camp, some cutting wood from the stunted spruces
near by, others helping with the tent stakes and lashing can-
vas. All was soon snug and secure and my camp-stove
fire vomited sparks out into the night. Beans and bacon
were frying on the stove, and my eiderdown was unrolled on
the tent’s snow floor and spread over robes of deerskin.
Wetunik and his wife lent a hand with the cooking, which,
though it was done by signs and gestures, drove away the
loneliness of dining alone. Their enjoyment of supper and
of a long smoke afterward, expressed in grunting, smiles, and
many sighs, was eloquent of the lean condition of their lar-
der, and when I loaded the paunches of their kooletahs with

THE BELCHER ISLANDS

sea biscuit and tobacco, they could only smile their thank-
fulness and trudge away through the drift to their own camp
near by to call out to their waiting family, “Nucky” (food),
not halfway over.

With every mile on from the camp of the Eskimos, the
country became more rugged and more barren. Great soil-
less slopes of rock tumbled down to sea from a horizon of
increasingly higher hills. Such trees as grew in pockets and
ice-gouged hollows seemed to be no larger than potted plants.
There was little game — here and there a ptarmigan or a white
fox skulked toward the ice edge out at sea, or, sometimes, like
a gull in the wake of a ship a lone raven followed our trail.

Great Whale, the last north post, was from Fort George
eight days away. Sundown on Christmas Day was our
twelfth day of sledging, and still no post could we see.
Darkness came. The wind was bitterly cold. Long since
I had given up hope of reaching the post that night. Shelter
and scalding tea was all that I could think of, when the sledge
shot out upon a sheet of black glare ice. It was the river
ice of the Great Whale. A single square of yellow light
shone like a beacon through the darkness.

A long gaunt figure clad in a hooded capote stalked down,
lantern in hand, to greet us. He was Harold, the post’s half-
Indian, half-Swede interpreter. When I stepped within
the glare of his lantern light, the effect for the moment must
have been that of an apparition, for a strange white man
in this country, at this season, was unheard of. I followed
him to his cabin, a snug little place, snow-walled to the eaves.
A great two-decked stove, its side glowing red, centred the
single large deal-panelled room. An old frayed calendar, a

14 MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

few missionary lithographs, and some firearms hung on the
wall.

Groups of Eskimos utterly silent and staring whenever my
eyes were turned away, stood back to walls around me, and
old Harold’s wife, who for all her white-man’s shoes and
dress of flowered calico, was an Eskimo, crouched before the
stove. Old Harold sat beside her, embarrassed and ill at
ease, gazing into space and silent save when I questioned
him. All of this to the lash of snow against the cabin walls,
the dogs’ mournful howls, and the drifters’ unending drone.

Ill

WITH one Nero, old Harold’s interpreter, and a
post-servant Eskimo, and a spanking twelve-dog
team, the last hundred and fifty miles of my trip
began. More bold and rugged coast flanked the way. We
often crawled within shadow lengths of cliflFs that rose
straight up from sea. The desolation grew with every mile,
and native camps were few and wide apart. The days were
cold, the sledge runners scrunched over snow as dry and as
gritty as sand, and the low ground drift plastered white the
muzzles of the team.

Nero was famed far and wide as one of two — the other was
his brother “Husky Bill” — who could speak, albeit in pidgin
fashion, a few words of English. Our common language
made for an intimacy between us. He constituted himself
my special bodyguard. On drifting days when to bare my
hands to fill and light a pipe was much too cold, he per-
formed that office for me. He was master of the grub box
and sleeping bag. With his teeth he pulled off my boots of
sealskin, at turning-in time at night, and was master of
ceremonies generally at every camp along the way.

Gulf Hazard, three days on, marked the end of trees; so
we put in to a last little grove and took on wood for a last
wood-fire meal at noon. We moved slowly, bending into a
thick, drifting wind. All, save the black rock masses of the
slopes of coast which loomed through veils of drift, was white

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

desolation. We veered close into the coast as night ap-
proached, on the watch for a camp ground within the shelter
of some little cove or embankment arm, when, as we rounded
a point, the dogs started baying, and from Nero came the
word “Innuet.” There was a momentary respite from the
blur of drift, and I barely made out the domes of a village of
snow houses.

From the black voids of igloo tunnel mouths came shaggy
beings on hands and knees and the bounding forms of dogs.
Leather-faced as I was, and dressed as were the men, the
Eskimo, took me, for the moment, to be one of their own
kind, but when they found their mistake there was a peal of
laughter, and peering close, they wrung my hand again,
with unintelligible exclamations the while as to the novelty
that Nero had brought amongst them.

On hands and knees through a low tunnel I followed Nero
who, whip-butt in hand, cowed the dogs as we brushed them
by, and within twenty feet squeezed through a door into a
large igloo dome. The housewife, her naked babe nestled
warmly in the depths of her kooletah hood, turned from the
trimming of her seal-oil lamp which lit the white cavern with
a feeble yellow cast, and welcomed us. Her babe, too, poked
out its tiny naked arm for the hand-shaking.

A frozen seal carcass which lay on the snow floor, a nest of
yelping puppies in a niche of the igloo wall, willow mats, and
robes of bear and deerskin were the igloo’s furnishings.

A supply of black plug tobacco, needles, and bright-
coloured trade candy was a principal part of my outfit to be
given as presents to our various hosts along the way. Nero,
of course, officiated on occasions when the presents were

THE BELCHER ISLANDS

given out — “sweetie-give-’em” was his name for it, which at
this camp obtained the proportions of a small festival.

The result of “sweetie-give-’em” — flinging handfuls to
the scrambling, squealing throng, upended, their seal-booted
legs thrashing air — attracted the grown-ups from the igloos
adjoining and packed our igloo full. The odour of skin
clothes and seal-oil lamp became increasingly intolerable
until Nero, noticing my distress, shooed them out into the
open again, explaining diplomatically that “Angarooka”
(the white master), “him sick nose!”

Five days in all I spent prowling about the iron-bearing
cliff faces of the islands which I had come all this way to
examine. Breaking off rock samples here and there and
taking close-up photographs in the acid month of January
were not pleasant tasks, but less pleasant still was the fact
that the result of all my examination showed that the sup-
posed deposits of iron ore of the Nastapokas were too hope-
lessly lean to be of the slightest economic importance. I
had to face the fact that all the long journey had been for
nothing.

Discouraged, I was on the point of starting back for camp
in order to pack and strike off south again over the gulf of
600 miles that stood between me and the Ground Hog fron-
tier, when Nero pointed out to sea over leagues and leagues of
ice that lay before us to a horizon of gray-black rime, pon-
derously spiralling. “Big land over there,” he said and
added, explaining the source of his information, “Husky,
him say so.”

In a moment, Wetalltok, the Eskimo of Charlton Island,
sprang to mind; and I remembered the details of a certain

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

A frozen seal carcass which lay on the snow floor, a nest of
yelping puppies in a niche of the igloo wall, willow mats, and
robes of bear and deerskin were the igloo’s furnishings.

THE BELCHER ISLANDS

given out — “sweetie-give-’em” was his name for it, which at
this camp obtained the proportions of a small festival.

Five days in all I spent prowling about the iron-bearing
cliflF faces of the islands which I had come all this way to
examine. Breaking off rock samples here and there and
taking close-up photographs in the acid month of January
were not pleasant tasks, but less pleasant still was the fact
that the result of all my examination showed that the sup-
posed deposits of iron ore of the Nastapokas were too hope-
lessly lean to be of the slightest economic importance. I
had to face the fact that all the long journey had been for
nothing.

In a moment, Wetalltok, the Eskimo of Charlton Island,
sprang to mind; and I remembered the details of a certain

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

day when Johnny Miller, the Company’s interpreter, Wetall-
tok, and I were gathered around the latter’s old sea chest of
curios.

“Yes, sir,” Johnny had said, nodding toward Wetalltok,
“he is full of stories of the North, sir. All the time he is
talking of his hunting ground and how long ’tis since he’s
seen it; and ’tis a long time, I do know, for he’s been here
eighteen years with me.”

“ But where does he come from — the Great Whale Coast?”
I asked, hoping he might have information of the country
whither I was bound.

“No, ’tis islands, sir, he says, far off from the Great Whale
Coast at sea.”

Then for a long time Wetalltok had talked to Johnny in
Eskimo. “He has been telling me things about them is-
lands, sir,” said Johnny when the conversation ended.

“Where are these islands?” said I in idle curiosity, pulling
out my travelling map. Wetalltok scanned it long and
earnestly, at a loss, I thought, to understand; but finally he
pointed to the little dots of land marked on the chart as the
Belchers. “An’ queer it is, sir,” said Johnny, interpreting,
“but he says the white man makes his islands small enough.”

Then from a litter, odds and ends of tools, old carvings of
ivory, harness toggles, harpoon heads, and the like, Wetall-
tok drew out an old coloured lithograph, tattered and torn.
On the back of it, in pencil and crudely drawn, was a map,
obviously handiwork of his own. “He says these is the real
islands, sir,” said Johnny as Wetalltok spread it out before
me. “Here is his old winter sealin’ ground,” as Wetalltok
pointed to the spot, “and here,” he continued, still interpret-

THE BELCHER ISLANDS 19

ing, “is where he hunted walrus, two days’ kayakin’ farther
north.”

“Two days by kayak!” said I in astonishment. “How
many miles, Johnny, do you think Wetalltok could go in
two days?”

“Well, sir,” said Johnny, “the seventy miles from here to
Moose would be easy travellin’, sir.”

Seventy miles! I scanned the map. “Good Lord, if that
is true, here are islands that must be a hundred miles long.”

“Yes, sir,” said Johnny, in his most non-committal man-
ner.

Wetalltok, carefully weighing his words, went on:

Here was the country where the geese nested in spring,
and where, during the summer days when the geese had shed
their wing feathers and were unable to fly, he and his family
used to capture them by running them down. Here in an-
other place was the bear country, where bears were many
when the icefields broke up in spring, and here (pointing
to groups of little outlying islands) were the rookeries of sea
pigeons and eiders that were many — they made clouds in the
sky. “And here” — as Wetalltok pointed to what I sup-
posed, since it was so extraordinarily large, must be an
indentation of the sea — “is where he caught the rare fresh-
water seal and made his salmon kills. ’Tis a lake, sir,” said
Miller; “that is, he says so, sir.”

Then for an interval Wetalltok talked in Eskimo to
Johnny Miller. Finally Miller continued: “He says, sir,
from the south end, and looking north, the lake is like the
sea — no land, just water, and then the sky.”

If Wetalltok had told me that some sea serpent had sud-

HUDSON BAY AND THE FICTIONARY BELCHER
ISLANDS

As they were shown on the Admiralty charts. This depiction was made by
Captain Coates, a famous shipmaster in the employ of the Hudson’s Bay Company
in 1700, and continued to appear on the Admiralty charts up to the present day.

HUDSON BAY AND THE REAL BELCHER ISLANDS

As they were shown to be by Mr. Flaherty. For two hundred and fifty years the
once-a-year fur ships of the Hudson’s Bay Company had been sailing within a few
miles of this archipelago with no idea of its size.

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

denly risen froniT the sea, picked him up and carried him to
some little Island, and then tenderly and carefully launched
him In the tip-top of some waving tree, his story could hardly
have seemed more absurd. What! Not only islands.
Heaven knows how long, but on one of them a lake with a
horizon like the sea; and all this mass of land occupying an
Admiralty-charted water, where were plotted deep-sea sound-
ings and multitudes of mere dots of Islands ! How could such
a tale possibly be true? Why, the deep-sea ships of the
Hudson’s Bay Company through a period of more than two
centuries must have passed along not far from them!

Wetalltok had given me his map, and I had accepted it
merely as a memento of a picturesque liar of the broad north
country. But now Nero’s mention of these strange Islands
struck me as being more than a coincidence, and I deter-
mined on my return to Great Whale to sift the source of
Nero’s information and satisfy myself once for all as to the
truth of Wetalltok’s strange tale.

We were two weeks on the return to Great Whale, en-
countering the worst weather and the hardest travel of the
year. For four days on end we were marooned on an island
while the sea Ice, broken, whilst we slept, from Its fastening
along the coast, sailed out to sea before a driving nor’easter.
When the wind from the west blew it in again, it came in
broken pans and rafted fields. Some dog or other kept fall-
ing between the floes as we picked our way along. Hauling
them out amid a din of howls, drying feet, and while Nero
pinioned the snapping heads, freeing their toes of small cut-
ting particles of ice, what with the cold and drift, were, as
Nero said, “Damn hard time.”

THE BELCHER ISLANDS

Old Harold shook his head doubtfully when I finished my
tale of Wetalltok’s map and Nero’s story. “We see some of
them islanders every year,” said Harold, “when they come
in over the sea ice to trade, and none of them says what mon-
sters is them islands, sir.”

I started on a new tack. “How many Eskimos live on
the island?” Harold hesitated for a long while, then en-
gaged Nero and his servants in conversation and began
counting up the heads of island families that in years gone
by had traded at Great Whale. Finally came the answer,
“Not less than one hundred and fifty all told.”

“Do you think, then,” said I, “that a hundred Eskimos
could hunt their way, year in and year out, on any but a
large mass of land? For,” I added, “between Cape Jones
and Gulf Hazard, a distance of two hundred miles, there
are hardly more than one hundred and fifty Eskimos, and
you know the fight they have for game.”

To make a long story short, Harold was inclined to believe
that in Wetalltok’s map and story there might be something
more than fiction. For the succeeding two days he closely
questioned the Eskimos of all the countryside, and the sum
of the information thus gained, though vague and broken,
gave more than a hint of corroboration.

Down over the sea ice to Moose Factory, and on up the
frozen Moose, within two months, I reached the “line,”
and the last of the eleven hundred miles of journeying was
over. Conviction of the truth of Wetalltok’s strange tale
had grown with every mile.

^"Tl ^HE northern boundary of the tremendously impor-
I tant iron-ore field of northern Minnesota is, roughly
speaking, the boundary between the United States
and Canada. For years after the opening up of these fabulous
deposits, extensions were explored for on the Canadian side.
It seemed a foregone conclusion that such were bound to
occur. For the last twenty-five years, however, thousands
of square miles throughout northern Ontario have been ex-
plored in vain. The writer’s father, as representative of
one of the large operating companies in Minnesota, carried
on a large part of this exploration. We found in the boulder
debris along various parts of this Height of Land, iron ore
float similar in character to some of the Minnesota ores. In
one region we found it in such quantities that extensive ex-
plorations were undertaken through the surrounding country
in an attempt to locate the body of it in the ground. The
source was never found. When, however, I examined the
ores on the Nastapokas, I recognized at once that they and
the float that I had seen years before were identical. ^

*Dr. C. K. Leith, who is a well-known authority on the geology of northern Minnesota
and Michigan, made his examination of the Nastapokas during the summer preceding my
own journey. His monograph gives an excellent description of the island formations;
his conclusions, offered tentatively owing to the limited time he had for investigation, he
summarizes as follows:

“From an economic standpoint the repetition of essentially Lake Superior conditions in
the Hudson Bay country cannot but be of interest . . . when it is remembered that

the enormous deposits of iron, copper, nickel, and cobalt on the south side of the Archsan
protaxis are, with very few exceptions, associated with Algonkian rocks, and late Algonkian
at that, rather than with Archaean rocks. There are yet no discoveries to warrant close

THE BELCHER ISLANDS

Though I had found nothing of economic interest in the
iron-ore measures of the Nastapokas, the information which
I had received from Wetalltok, the Eskimo, that to seaward
of the Nastapokas, “ two days’ fast sledging over the sea ice, ”
were a group of islands which, if he spoke the truth, were
incredibly large, was in itself interesting enough as an in-
ducement for exploration. But that which made it doubly
interesting was a certain statement I found in a geological re-
port upon my return to Lower Canada. The statement was
part of a report, dated 1884, of Dr. Robert Bell, to the effect
that when in Nastapoka country he had received from Eski-
mos who had come in from the islands out at sea fragments of
rock which led him to believe that the rock system of these
islands was similar to that of the Nastapokas.^

If Doctor Bell’s surmise was correct and Wetalltok’s
statement was anywhere near the truth — discounting it by
half, the land mass he described could in area be not less
than 2,000 square miles — here was work to do.

commercial comparison of the two regions. — “An Algonkian Basin in Hudson Bay — A
comparison with the Lake Superior Basin,” Econ. Geology, 1910 vol. V, pp. 227 — 46; ref-
erence on p. 246.

iRobert Bell: “Observations on the Geology, Zoology and Botany of Hudson’s Strait and
Bay, made in 1885,” Report DD of Annual Kept. Geol. Survey of Canada, vol. I for 1885,
Montreal, 1885, p. 14.

A. P. Low in one of his reports refers to a projected exploration of the Belcher Islands
that was not carried out. Probably he, too, had received interesting information from the
natives concerning them. The reference is of interest as evidence of the ice conditions
that may obtain in the bay during the summer months.

“At Great Whale River we were again delayed by ice until the 7th of July, when we were
advised by all the Eskimos to abandon our proposed trips to the Belcher Islands, which lie
about seventy miles off the coast and about which, owing to the prevalence of westerly
winds during the early summer, the ice would be very thick. This advice proved correct
as the Hudson’s Bay Company’s ship. Lady Head, was beset with heavy ice as far south as
Bear Island in James Bay, where the ice was left on the 20th of August.”

Probably, also, he had in mind Doctor Bell’s remarks on certain rock specimens sup-
posed to have been broken from the fixed rocks of the Belchers and his belief that these
specimens indicated the extension to the Belchers of the Nastapoka series.

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

To explore Wetalltok’s islands, then, was the object of a
second expedition. At Moose Factory I secured the dimin-
utive 36-foot Nastapoka and engined her with a motor we
had canoed and packed down from the frontier.

By the time we had journeyed up the east coast to Great
Whale River, the season was well advanced. Moreover,
among the Eskimos of Great Whale the Nastapoka did
not inspire confidence. They looked askance at the fire-
spitting, rifle-cracking innards of the craft. Much bar-
gaining, tempting offers, good old Harold’s “fur trade”
support, and Nero’s argument that “all same noise like gun
never mind, scare ’em seal, that’s all,” finally overcame their
prejudices.

Old Harold celebrated the day we left — the Company’s
standard flew from the flagpole and Eskimo half-breed ser-
vants and groups of children lined the rim of the river’s high
bank, as we, far below them, scooted like a water bug out to-
ward the sea.

Swinging up along the bold flanks of the coast, for three
calm sunlit days we cruised happily along. Seals innumer-
able popped their heads through the glass around us, and
there were whirring flocks of ducks and eiders, so the crew
had food in plenty and smiled their content.

At nightfall of the third day we reached the point — a small
island outlying the Gulf Hazard mainland some five miles —
from which I planned to strike out over the open sea for
Wetalltok’s islands. In the only harbour available, one ex-
posed to all the winds save those blowing from the west,
which then prevailed, we anchored for the night. But
within the hour the wind chopped around and blew in upon

THE BELCHER ISLANDS

us from the north. The wind rose as black night settled
down. We paid out all the anchor chain, hoping to hang on
against morning. But the Nastapoka^ her anchors dragging,
was forced foot by foot toward shore. By midnight she was
piled aground while breaking seas flushed gear and food from
the cabin and open hold.

When daylight came the battered Nastapoka stood half
heeled before us on the sands. We took stock of the wet
and bedraggled state of our affairs. The Eskimos, their
minds on food, combed the beach. As they were out of
sight for some little time I set out to find them. They were
not far distant, huddled behind a group of boulders, bent
double, their arms wrapped about their middles and in chorus
groaning. Lying near them were the empty containers of a
considerable quantity of dried apples upon which of course
they had stuffed themselves and then — drunk water!

After three days of caulking, patching, and re-rigging the
Nastapoka' s running gear and mending torn and tattered
sails, we limped on down to Great Whale Post. By the
time we arrived the sailing season was over.

Then, said Nero, he would see me to Wetalltok’s islands.
With dogs and sleds, he said, we would cross over the ice-
fields in winter, during the six weeks of February and March
when the ice is immovable. We shook hands over it and
agreed to wait until the “seeco [ice], him strong.”

Before Nero and I could begin the journey, five months
must elapse. I sounded Mavor, the factor, as to the possi-
bility of wintering with him, but a rough inventory of his
mess supply showed a meagre quantity of food barely suffi-
cient for his own needs. So I prepared to travel 180 miles

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

south to more opulent Fort George. No “York” boat crew
at this late season was obtainable. They feared being
caught by the freeze-up on the way. The bruised and
battered Nastapoka was useless. By canoe was the only
way. Poor Mavor, in his eighth year of factorship at God-
forsaken old Great Whale, was loath to see me go. He felt
that he must go too if for nothing more than the change of
scene; the loneliness he said was “getting” him. So he made
old Harold his deputy, and we launched out in a post canoe
for Fort George with a “You’ll be froze in on the way, sir,”
from old Harold ringing in our ears.

Five and a half months later found me back again at
Great Whale. Nero had come down a hundred miles from
his hunting ground and was waiting, Harold, however,
gave me disquieting news. The islanders’ annual migration
into the post for trade had not materialized — they were, he
said, weeks overdue. “I doesn’t understand it, sir,” said
he, “the huskies here says the ice is strong and holdin’ all
along the coast. But their not coming means there’s some-
thing wrong with it somewhere, sir.” Nero, however, ex-
plained the delay — “Seals, him not plenty. When seals
him plenty, him come sure.” Waiting in vain for the
glimpse of black specks winding through the rough icefields
out at sea, Nero and I decided finally to start, islanders or no
islanders.

It was long after sleep-time. With all our plans settled
for the following morning’s departure, I pulled on my koole-
tah and prepared to trudge over to my own sleeping quarters
and turn in. From out-of-doors came the din of howling
and snarls and yells and yelps of fighting. A sledge or more

THE BELCHER ISLANDS

of natives had arrived. The door burst in and an old
Eskimo, one Pitchalock, of Little Whale, brushing the drift
from his deer-fur clothing, strode into the room. Drinking a
pannikin of scalding tea, he rattled out unintelligible words
the while — “seeco,” “annohie,” “komitik,” “cukuktinnie.”
Eventually we gathered that three sleeps to northward the
ice, broken, was driving out to sea. On one driving pan was
a team of dogs entangled in their harnesses, the dogs of
islanders. Harold surmised that they had been caught by
the break-up on crossing over.

“’Tis bad luck you’re havin’, sir,” said old Harold, “for
in the twenty-eight years I have been here, ’tis only the
second time the ice has broke.”

When six months later I returned to Lower Canada, Sir
William, with a persistence altogether characteristic, said,
“Get a ship.” This meant a Newfoundland schooner and
crew and a cruise north along the Labrador and through
Hudson Strait and south, this time along the upper half of
the East Main of Hudson Bay. The topsail schooner Laddie^
seventy-five feet over all and eighty-five tons net register,
was purchased for the work.

The Laddie had been through Hudson Strait before.
“But no glory to ’er,” one of my crew informed me. “She
had three mounted police aboard an’ relief for the police
post at Cape Fullerton, on the west side of the Bay. When
she reached the Strait, what wasn’t head wind was ice — big
Fox Channel ice, miles and miles of it, swingin’ out for the
North Atlantic. By the time she cleared the ice September
was come, an’ there was more winds, head on. Well, sir.

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

she beat till she was almost in sight of the hungry post at
Cape Fullerton. Then snow come, an’ a heavy gale. She
got a drubbin’, sir. In four days she was near halfway back
to the Strait. Says the skipper, ‘Relief for Fullerton or no,
the Laddie clears for Newfoundland.’ And she did.”

For four weeks the Laddie^ in dock, was re-rigged and over-
hauled from bow to stern, and belted with greenheart to
shield her from the ice. When we had stuffed and crammed
and stowed away our outfit in her hold she stood burdened
to the rails, with lumber for winter huts, oil — fifty barrels of
it in nets lashed together — and the long winter’s coal in bags
piled high. Our fresh beef and bags of vegetables swung
from the rigging and ladder-ways.

The old sea dogs who for days had been hanging about the
wharf predicted as the time dragged on that we were “o’er
late to go pokin’ up through Hudson Strait.” O’er late we
were, but at last the great day, the 14th of August, came.
With a chantey, the crew winched the anchors to the rails.
There were salutes from the fishing craft around. A pom-
pous little tug made fast our hawser, and slowly towed us
through the bottle neck of St. John’s Harbour. Forests of
masts and long fingers of wharves, our last sight of civiliza-
tion slowly panoramed from view, and as the friendly tug
let go our hawser and stepped aside, we rolled out into the
long swells of the North Atlantic.

From the mild blue skies of Newfoundland, within the
fortnight we were a thousand miles to northward running
close-hauled through squalls of snow into the mouth of
Hudson Strait. The giant cliffs of Resolution, rising sheer
from a white lash of sea, were our first sight of land north

THE BELCHER ISLANDS

of Labrador. From Resolution into the bare rock flanks of
the Strait's north coast, Baffin Land, the days were fair
enough, light catspaws of wind and gray snowy-looking
skies. Here and there bergs of gigantic size sailed proudly
with the tide. Streams of emerald cascaded over their
flanks. Strata of gulls stood etched against the gray-white
immensity of their walls.

On from the “saddle-backs,” the smooth rounded mass of
coast with its clean, long, curving lines of shore gave way to
broken, erratic sweeps masked by multitudes of little high
rock islands. Washed by enormous tides, at flood whole
groups of them were reefs or under sea. “No water for an
honest ship, sir,” said the skipper. Carefully sounding our
way, we crawled into a nest of islands for the night’s shelter.
We threw both anchors into the good mud bottom of a little
island’s enfolding arms, into what the lead line showed was
seven fathoms fore and aft. All hands but the watch turned
in to sleep. The night was still. No breath of wind. The
aurora raked to and fro across the sky. I was still awake
when the watch, clattering to the companionway, bawled,
“She’s grounding, sir!” While we held our lanterns over-
head and tried to peer down into the darkness, she slowly
began heeling until she lay on her beam-ends, high and dry.
The deck load, lumber, coal, and casks of oil, I feared, would
slide through the bulwarks; but unable to see, all we could
do was to cling through the night to the rigging and ladders
of the upper rail. When at last daylight came, we found
that the Laddie was berthed in a cushion of soft mud and
ooze. A reef, over which her back would have broken had
she stranded there, lay less than ten feet away.

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

We zigzagged in our attempts to beat through the five
hundred miles of Strait, from the island mask of Baffin Land,
south to the sheer thousand-foot coast of Cape Hope’s Ad-
vance and Wakeham Bay, for the winds and squalls of snow
were baffling. Too late to gain a wintering base in the Bay,
we put into Amadjuak Bay three hundred and fifty miles in
on the coast of Baffin Land. Here with the aid of some forty
Eskimos, enthusiastic over the advent of the “kablunak,”
with his precious stores and goods for trade, ship was dis-
charged by dories and kayaks of the Eskimos catamaraned.
Where they disgorged on rocky ledges of shore, old men,
women with babes bobbing in their hoods, and children of
assorted sizes in an antlike stream, packed boxes, bales, and
bundles over the rocks to the wintering base site. Within a
week a village of topeks (tents of sealskin) along with four
white wedges of tents of canvas and, in the centre of them
all, our hut of white lumber roofed with black tar paper stood
looking out over the bare rock desolation.

By the last week of September my three men and I were
settled for the year and the good old Laddie/]\ist the day be-
fore the first skin ice formed over the harbour’s face, sailed
slowly out, bound for her winter berth in Newfoundland.

Through the ten months of winter we had enough to do.
There were two thousand miles of sledging along the coast
and reconnaissances inland to the great lake of Amadjuak.
There, too, was the task of filming as much as might be of
the lives of the Eskimos. But all of this is another story.

When the winter had finally worn away, through the
long light of warm July days we watched each new patch of

THE BELCHER ISLANDS

blue-green water where it shone resplendent among the white
waste of the icefields at sea. But of signs of a break-up
there were none. Even when August came, Eskimos,
bringing us the eggs of gulls and eiders, were sledging still
over the ice from distant lands. “The summer is slow in
coming,” they said, and they worried over it too, for the

ROUTE OF THE SCHOONER LADDIE

From St. John’s to Moose Factory the trip took more than a year. Because
of the late start, Mr. Flaherty and his party were forced to winter at Amadjuak Bay,
sending the Laddie back to St. John’s. The following summer the schooner returned.
She was nearly crushed in an ice pack, but escaped and picked up the party at
Amadjuak Bay, continuing toward the Belcher Islands. She was wrecked in a fog,
but managed to get off the rocks at high tide, and made a landing on the Belchers.
Her condition was so bad, however, that she was taken to Moose Factory for re-
pairs, delaying the real work of exploration until the next summer.

34 my ESKIMO FRIENDS

time of their summer migration along the coast was near at
hand.

Not until the tenth day of August did we waken to see,
where so long had lain the great white waste of ice, the blue-
green of open sea. To the highest hill of the harbour’s
mouth I sent one of our families of Eskimos to encamp, to
signal us with a moss-fire smoke as soon as the Laddie hove
in view.

The summer was nearly gone when on the nineteenth of
August the Laddie sailed in to our relief. Hemmed in by
ice along Labrador, for nearly two months she had been en
route. “We was nipped in Grey Straits, sir,’’ he continued,
“what with the ice raftin’ an’ pilin’ up around us an’
a-squeezin’ so. Ne’er a door would open. Even the fuel tank
to the starboard was busted. I thought it would raft to the
yardarms. With ’lasses and hardtack and matches in a bot-
tle and fuel and a bit of clothin’, charts, and a compass we
unlimbered the dories and made off on an ice pan and stood
there listenin’ to ’er timbers creakin’ and groanin’ and the
thuddin’ of the ice pilin’ and pilin’ up around her. I turned
to figurin’ out how we could haul the dories over the ice to
open water. I climbed some rafted ice to get a sight for a
course through it when right before me eyes I saw a lead of
blue water, and widenin’ as I watched it. ’Twas the tide
on the turn, sir, and I knew that once more I’d be climbin’ up
over the Laddie's rail. And sure enough the ice slackened off,
sir, and we was away two hours on with a bone in our teeth.”

Within a week we were ready to sail, bound at last for
Wetalltok’s mysterious land. The wintering base now dis-
mantled was a forlorn and empty shell. To the faithful and

‘^revillqn freres,n.v.

•«C|^

.>#V

ESKIMO OMIAK IN THE SPRING

THE BELCHER ISLANDS

kindly Eskimos who had served us so well, we gave out the
last we had — a mirror with a gilt frame, old blankets, cloth-
ing, old shoes, precious bits of metal, and an old alarm
clock with one hand, knives, old pots and kettles and pans,
and most wonderful of all, some oranges from the Laddie —
“peeruwalluk pumwa” (the very best of all that is sweet),
they said. Enraptured, they rubbed them against their
noses.

We said our good-byes regretfully enough. Anxiously
they inquired if ever they should see us again. I had not the
courage to be definite on that point; I knew that when sum-
mer again rolled around they would climb to the highest hill,
hopeful for a sight of us.

WE HAD clear water through the Straits, for the
migration of the icefields to the North Atlantic
from Hudson Bay had long since passed. Follow-
ing the snow-capped cliffs of Wolstenholme which lean a
thousand feet down to sea, we turned into Hudson Bay.
Within thirty miles the giant blocks of coast had stepped
down to a mere thread of land apparently no higher than
the scattered ice pans which drifted by at sea. The only
break in a hundred miles of its monotony was the brow of
Cape Sir Thomas Smith still alight with the last yellow flood
of a big, drowsy ball of sun.

On the third day we hit the Ottawas, the northernmost of
the groups of islands which, as the maps show, parallel the
East Main for a distance of some four hundred miles. Along
the line of this group, south some two hundred miles, we
hoped to find Wetalltok’s land. Black barren masses of vol-
canic rock are the Ottawas. There is not even the tawn and
russet of the mosses to relieve their bleak desolation. As we
wore into the coast, the mate climbed to the crow’s-nest on a
lookout for a break ahead which might lead into a harbour.
Flocks of eiders from rock ledges of the shore rose in alarm as
we approached, and in whirring flights circled us. The
screams of gulls were constantly in the air. A herd of walrus,
holding to the edge of a drifting ice pan with their gleaming
tusks, let go and with a resounding splash dived from view.

THE BELCHER ISLANDS

Suddenly the mate’s bawling, “Man ahead, sir,” brought
us with a rush to the ladder-ways. In a moment more we
stood abreast of a yawning mouth of harbour and before us
stood a ship riding at anchor, beyond it, on shore, a hut, and
beside it a flag mast from which a Union Jack was breaking
out upon the wind.

The Active she proved to be, one of the veteran whalers
of Dundee. Having completed her winter and summer
whaling, she was about to clear again for Scotland. Both
the winter and summer, they said, had been hard — little
chance for whales. The winter was one of constant gales
and nearly all the summer through they had been hemmed
in by vast fields of ice. They were on the last legs of their
rations; one of the crew, with a drawn and doleful face,
begged of me whatever “soft” food I might have — “oatmeal
and the like, sir” — then showed me a toothless pair of gums.

“Do you mean to tell me,” said I, “that you had the
hardihood to leave Scotland without a tooth in your head?”

“No, sir,” said he, “but you know how it is, sir, a few
drinks before you leave and then the wee bit of an upset the
day after, sir, what with the ship’s rollin’ an’ all; so to tell
you the truth, sir, I heaved them over the rail, sir!”

During the winter two of the ship’s harpooners had died
of delirium tremens. The last trace we saw of the Active as
we swung oflF for the south were two wooden crosses, grim
silhouettes against the sky.

Icefields lay not far from us. All day long an ice “blink”
loomed in the west. “If the wind swings, ’tis fog we’ll be
havin’, sir,” the skipper said. And sure enough by morning
great banks of it lay around us. As the day wore on, how-

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

ever, it thinned to a milky haze, but notwithstanding, we
almost bumped into one low-worn rib of rock. On an hour
farther, though there was no land in view, we looked down
through the emerald to the bouldery bottom of the shoals.
Carefully for three days we crept on. Some one of the crew
was constantly in the crow’s nest and the leadsman stood
always ready in the bow. We had no suns for latitude, but
at nightfall the log showed a southing from the Ottawas of
two hundred miles — we were at last in the neighbourhood of
Wetalltok’s islands.

“But we might as well be in the neighbourhood of a reef
or two, what with this fog and all,” was the captain’s obser-
vation. “We ought to be up and out of it, sir, to a snug har-
bour until it comes clear again. ’Tis one thing we know, sir
— the mainland is to east’ard and no more nor seventy miles
with a harbour waiting us. With no sun for sights and only
a log and dead reck’nin’ clean down from the Ottawas and
tides playin’ hell with us the while — why, as ’tis, sir, we’re
nowhere.”

So we squared away before a light wind and laid a course
through the night, the captain cheerful over the prospect of
what he called the “tender arms” of a harbour before morn-
ing. The timid piping of the wind, the rattle of blocks
along the boom, and the monotone of a song from the helms-
man were the only sounds.

“Well, sir,” said the skipper finally, looking up from his
game of solitaire on the cabin table, “delay or no, it’s lucky
we’re gettin’ clear of it all. We’ll be ridin’ at anchor by

mornin’ in a fine, fine ” when crash! bang! we pitched

in a heap to the floor.

THE BELCHER ISLANDS

A wild ground-swell broke over the stern, picked up the
Laddie and hurled her with thuds that sent the lamps, the
charts, telescopes, guns, and shelf-loads of crockery crashing
to the floor, into the teeth of a boiling reef. The rifle-like
cracking of sails, the hiss and slosh and din of breaking seas,
and the pounding of the Laddie up and down, up and down —
I thought the spars and rigging would rattle out of her.
When we peered down over the rails to nests of boulders and
the wash of seas, splinters the length of a man rose up and
drifted off" into the void. There was no launching the dories
in that blackness, we could only hope the Laddie would hold
till morning. “All hands to the hold !” sang out the captain,
and we dug up her boulder ballast piece by piece and passing
it through a chain of hands, dropped it over the rail. We
stripped the Laddie to the skin, which heaved as her bottom
struck the bar. We gave her up then and climbed to deck,
provisioned the dories, and waited for dawn.

When dawn did come a blanket of fog lay around us. The
wind, however, had died and the sea smoothed out to long
rolls of glass. A blur of yellow burned through the milk of
sky. In an hour the fog began melting away, and a half
mile to starboard an island stood out through the dissolv-
ing mists. With the dories we put off, wallowing through
the dying swells and on, sprawling on crests of surf, in to
shore.

It was not much of an island — a level, soilless bed of rock,
a mere platform rising out of sea. A ring of boulders at one
place showed where long since had stood the topek of some
wandering Eskimos. Near by was a seal-oil lamp which,
fashioned out of a piece of driftwood, had been made in an

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

emergency and seemed to point to the fact that whoever had
camped there had met with misadventure, perhaps the
break-up of the ice while travelling on the icefields.

Caching among boulders all the freight of food and gear
the dories had brought ashore, we returned to ship to take
off the last odds and ends before we abandoned her. We
found to our amazement that though the tide was near flood
there was not much water in the well.

“By gad, sir,” the skipper said, “though with my own
eyes I saw enough splinters cornin’ up and floatin’ off to make
a raft, yet here she is, sir, dry as a bone. Not only that, sir,
but if the tide come high, and it should, sir, what with all
these winds blowin’ from the one quarter, there’s the chance
that we can hobble her over the reef.”

So to work we went with a will. Thirty-five casks of oil,
all that remained of heavy cargo, we threw into the sea, then
dropped an anchor some 300 feet ahead, put on all sails, and
opened up the engine. With “heave-ho’s” from the crew
winding at the winch and “Now she comes, me byes, now
she comes,” from the skipper, slowly, inch by inch, the
Laddie moved. The crew broke out into a chantey as she
gathered way. “An alligator, I calls her,” the skipper
cried and called for a “mug up” for all hands. When a
light breeze an hour on tore up the last shrouds of fog which
had lain over us so long, it revealed the hole into which we
had poked the Laddie's nose. The white boils of reefs were
everywhere. In no direction could we see a single straight
lane of water through which the Laddie could get out to open
sea. I knew then that the reason we had not run aground
was that a strong magnetic attraction had kept swinging the

THE BELCHER ISLANDS

compass by which the helmsman kept his course. Literally,
the Laddie had wound her way into land.

“’Tis no place fur us, sir,” said the skipper, and he hailed
the mate and two of the crew who had gone off to the island
for fresh water.

“WeVe seen big land, sir,” they called as they clambered
up over the rail, and explained that they had glimpsed it
when they climbed a hill on the island.

“ Big land ? ” says the skipper. “You means the mainland.”

“Naw, sir,” said the mate, “what land we seen lays to
westward and there’s sixty miles or more of it, for ’tis spread
over nine points of the compass, sir.”

We could see it from the rigging and of its identity there
was no doubt; the blue loom which lay along the rim of that
gray waste of sea could be no other than Wetalltok’s land.

With the water casks hauled up and lashed into their
cradles we were out of it soon enough. Before sundown (the
log read twenty miles) we hove to off the northeastern por-
tion of the new-found coast. Cautiously sounding, we crept
through a bottle neck into a small rock-bound harbour. The
clank and clangour of the anchor chains pouring out through
the hawse pipes sent flocks of eiders a-whirring round us. A
long string of geese honked wildly as they flapped awkwardly
away. A gorgeous silver fox scurried into the crevices of a
great pile of rocks.

Up over the moss carpet of a valley, a shallow groove in
bare rock slopes, I climbed to a vantage-point from which,
as far as the eye could see, north, south, and west, lay range
upon range of hills. The valleys between them were moss-
grown sweeps of tawn and russet strangely like cultivated

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

fields. Among them here and there were the green and
silver disks of lakes and ponds, and between two distant
jagged lines lay a long blue tongue of sea.

Not only in the red bands of marl and shale, and in the
distant masses of yellow which were quartz sites, and in
the white-grays which were limestones was the land mass,
as I had hoped, an extension of the ore-bearing series of the
mainland. Though it was barely exposed, I stumbled over
ore itself — rich stuff which lay heavy in my hands!

But here we were, on the last legs of food and gear, with
the ship almost broken down. The skipper said she was
leaking badly, and what with the September gales and snow-
storms which were near at hand we should be “up and out of
it, headin’ south with all the sail we has.” For two days,
however, in which the crew were busy overhauling sailing
gear and ballasting ship, we made reconnaissances inland and
south along the coast. We saw the blue rims of more new
land, all of it made up of the black ribs of eruptives, the
terra cotta and the red and white and yellow ribbons of
the Nastapoka rocks. There was no sight of natives but the
boulder rings of their old camp grounds were everywhere.

Reluctantly, at daylight of the third day, we put out for
the south.

At Great Whale River Post, we received the first news,
albeit it was two months old, of the great busy world outside.
We picked up the mouth of the Great Whale too late to get
in over the river bars to the post. With three of the crew, I
unlimbered the launch but, confused by the darkness, whilst
threading through the bars, we were caught by a sweep of
surf and thrown up upon a narrow spit ot sand. Up river,

i.':

THE BELCHER ISLANDS

a mile and a half away, shone two squares of yellow light,
windows of one of the cabins of the post. Unable to see
through the boils of surf, the mate lashed a lantern to a long
pike pole, and as he waved it to and fro through the air, I
fired round after round from my Winchester.

We waited there an hour but there was no response.
Again we signalled, but with the same result. Not until the
moon rose at midnight did we get clear. When we landed I
glimpsed several forms flitting past the window lights and
dissolving in the darkness. Puzzled, we climbed to the cabin
and strode into a lighted but deserted room. Nearly half
an hour we waited there, our surprise and curiosity mounting
the while, when at last the familiar, long, lanky form of old
Harold stood halting in the doorway. Recognizing me in
a moment, his fear-beclouded face became wreathed in
smiles. He reached out for my hand exclaiming, “My God,
sir, I t’ote you was the Germans!” And so it was that we
first heard of the great World War.

From Great Whale we sailed on down through James Bay
and on through ship’s channel into the nine-mile-wide delta
of the Moose to Moose Factory; here the Laddie was made
ready for the slipway where, through the winter, the crew
and half-breed shipwrights of the post were to overhaul her.
When everything was taken out and her cobble ballast
thrown overboard, she filled to the engine room and would
have sunk had it not been for the shoals over which she rode.

HE first map of Hudson Bay, published in the year

1612, was based upon the notes of Hendrik Hudson,

which were brought out in the year 161 1 by the mu-

tinous crew which cast him adrift to perish from exposure
and starvation.

This map, strangely enough, shows three large islands
lying between 56° and 60°, approximately the latitude of
Wetalltok’s islands. The identity of these islands was prob-
lematical and provoked much discussion. Burpee, for in-
stance, in his chapter on the discovery of the Bay, speaking
of Hudson’s voyage and chart, says:

The chart shows several large islands lying off the western coast of
Hudson’s Bay between 65° and 60°. From Roe’s Welcome in the far
north to the foot of James Bay only two large islands lie off the western
coast, Marble Island and Akimiski. The former being out of the ques-
tion, we are reduced to Akimiski. That convenient island seems to be a
peg on which to hang every theory of the fourth voyage that defies other
solution.^

Luke Fox, in the summer of 1631, sailed along the eastern
coast. In about the latitude of the islands shown on Hud-
son’s chart, he mentions the existence of certain islands,
which he says Hudson named “Lancaster, his Isles.’’ No
trace of this name appears in any of Hudson’s notes. Of
the size and character of the islands. Fox gave no information .

‘L. J. Burpee: “The Search for the Western Sea,” New York, 1908.

THE BELCHER ISLANDS

They remained a mystery. And then in 1709 they disappear
altogether from the charts, to be replaced by the depiction
of island systems outlying the east coast given on the Ad-
miralty charts — groups of small islands in dotted outline,
the largest of them not ten miles across. These charts
are based on the notes and maps of Captain Coats, who from
1727 to 1751 sailed in and out annually along the east coast
of Hudson Bay.

Belchers Islands, four in number, lie forty-five leagues to westward of
Little Whale River; by another account, only twenty-nine leagues in
latitude 56° - 6', where I was entangled three days in ice.

About seven leagues north from those is a range of islands twenty
leagues in length, fourteen larger, and many smaller; the middle, in
58° 00 N. Latitude, at a distance of seventeen leagues from the east
main, amongst which the Usquemows swarm all the summer months to
catch fish and moulted fowl, in great abundance, upon all these, Belchers
and Sleeper Islands.^

Strangely enough — when I last visited Great Whale River
Coast in the Laddie — this was immediately following the
first landing on the islands — there had been brought into
the post, by one of the traders, as a curio from a far outpost
east of Southern James Bay, an old copy of company corres-
pondence— letters of Sir George Simpson, Governor of the
Hudson’s Bay Company, and of his factors on the Bay, dur-
ing the years 1846 and 1849. These letters contained, be-
sides routine business matters, a project for sending to
the Belcher Islands a half-breed servant of the company,
Thomas Weigand, by name, with Eskimo companions.

'John Barrow, edit.; “The Geography of Hudson’s Bay: Being the remarks of Captain
W. Coats,” etc., Hakluyt Soc. Pubis., ist series, London, 1852, vol. II, p. 66.

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

The letters relate how Welgand carried out this project.
They are, however, altogether concerned with starting a fur
trade on the Island; none of them ever gives any evidence as
to either the Island’s character or size.

Extracts from a letter from John Spencer, Fort George,
dated January 8, 1849, to Jos. Gladman, Esq.:

. . . At all events he [Thomas Weigand] succeeded to accomplish-

ing his visit to the Esquimaux Islands having neither met with obstruc-
tions from ice or shoals and when arrived there he met with the shelter
and security of an excellent harbour, objects of no trifling consideration
to the explorers of a strange coast — and although it so happened that
he saw but few natives and got but little from them it would be highly
ridiculous in endeavouring to make that appear as a sufficient reason for
not going again, and that their poverty should for a moment be thought
sufficient for framing such an idea, an idea in itself as absurd as it is
ridiculous, and could only find shelter in a narrow mind, for after our
knowledge of those islands, being more or less inhabited, and that those
natives are living under no other protective hand than that which na-
ture bestowed upon them, indifferent should we be considered in our
endeavour towards bettering mankind, were we to show ourselves in-
different towards them. I think the three first objects above cited are a
sufficient reason for future enterprise, even chilled as the minds of the
crew were at the solitude of the place which in itself ought to form but a
secondary consideration when exploring the regions of so inhospitable a
portion of the coast — what is it to them whether the ground be covered
with luxuriant verdure and everything around cheerful and pleasing, or
for them to find it as they did, provided they are blessed with a good har-
bour when arrived there, and by concerting measures hereafter who
knows but the inhabitants of these islands may be brought to
furnish a valuable portion of trade in Blubber, Foxes, Ivory and what-
not— all such matters have yet to be tried, and if we cannot succeed it
will then be time enough to relinquish the thing. At the present mo-
ment I have no doubt but they view the trip over there with a degree of
unpleasantry altogether ideal.

THE BELCHER ISLANDS

That this estimable scheme for mutual benefit, however,
was not to be realized is apparent from the fact that the is-
lands so soon and so completely drop out of Hudson Bay
tradition.

To the present generation of fur traders on the Bay,
Wetalltok’s tale was a myth, nor did they believe my first
reports. Among some of the government officials at
Ottawa, as well, these reports were nothing if not amusing.
Where I claimed the existence of a great mass of land, they
pulled out their Admiralty chart and showed me soundings!

PART II

WINTER ON WETALLTOK’S ISLANDS

Yes,” said Johnny Miller, the interpreter, when I
landed at Charlton Island, “Wetalltok says he’ll go.
He’s that glad to see his own land once more, sir,
an’ all his friends an’ relations what he hasn’t laid eyes on
these twenty years. An’ he tells me, sir, he’s real hungry
for walrus an’ seal an’ huntin’ — he’s all the time talkin’
about it. He knows wonderful places for walrus, sir, where
they almost cover the small rock islands, they is so many.
An’ he knows where the bear country is, too, sir. He told
me once how they had to hang things up on a string so
they dangled in the wind an’ made a noise in order to keep
the bears from prowlin’ aroun’ their camps. An’ more
than the huntin’, sir, he do want to show you how big them
islands is.”

By nightfall, Wetalltok’s home at Charlton was no more.
His wife and three children, his two partners, their wives and
seven children and twenty dogs, kayaks, sledges, tents, and
hunting gear were aboard the Laddie. Their impedi-
menta topped the Laddie' s deck load, which was already rail
high, while among the boxes and bales in the choking hold,
Wetalltok and his tribe made their temporary home. The
dogs, chained in the dories which swung from the davits over
the rails, whined and yelped and chorused to the skies.

gCOAY PDBOC CiBRARV

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

At nightfall, the fifth day of sailing northward, we sighted
the southern outliers of Wetalltok’s islands — little “hump-
backs” of jet with rings of surf around them. On long
lazy swells the Laddie rolled, aimlessly, with sails aflap. The
night stole In. We peered through the gloom. All we could
see was white rings of surf embracing the black shadows that
were Islands. As it was too dark to put out to sea again we
crept into a six-fathom sounding and paid out fifty fathoms
of chain in the lee of the nearest shore. Though the sky,
when all but the watch turned in to sleep, was cloudless and
crystalled with stars, by midnight, the wind piped wild and
quick through the rigging. Clouds scudded swiftly through
the sky. The Laddie's stern tailed off, not a biscuit’s throw
from shore. The dogs, drenched by the seas, howled and
whined, the big round eyes of the women and children peered
anxiously at us from the hold, while with lanterns we hov-
ered around the anchor chains speculating on how long they
would hold.

Daylight showed us an island, a lump of rock not much
larger than the ship itself, all agleam from the spume that
drove over it. Nowhere was there a landing. The rack and
retching of the chains as they sawed through the steel eyes of
the Laddie's nose, the slosh of the seas that combed us, and
the boom of the island’s shore was the dirge fifteen hours long
before Bill bawled out, “The glass is climbin’, sir.” As
suddenly as It had come, the gale died down.

Northwestward, blue wisps of loom that seemed to float
on the sea were our first glimpse of Wetalltok’s islands. We
rounded, a few hours on, what proved to be the southeastern
extremity of the island group. From a narrow winding

WINTER ON WETALLTOK’S ISLANDS 53

gutway we came out upon a narrow sound, landless on its
northern rim. The black forbidding shell of the outer
crest gave way to cliffs, ribboned by the yellow-gray and terra
cotta Nastapoka rocks. The lowlands were carpets of tawn
and russet moss. Wetalltok and his throng had eyes for
nothing but the game — schools of white whales looping
through the seas; flock upon flock of eiders winging off be-
fore us; and geese skimming the profiles of slopes and
hills, or regiments of them high in the air.

We found a site for a camp at the head of a snug horse-
shoe harbour. A noisy stream of fresh water ran into it; the
head of it was a beach of sand; fine landing for kayaks and
canoes. The ground around was for the most part smooth
moss sward.

We hardly had anchor down when Wetalltok from the
crow’s-nest called out, “Innuet!” and pointed toward the
sound. An Eskimo in a kayak came paddling toward us.
Within hailing distance he halted. Wetalltok called out in
Eskimo, then rapidly he paddled in. Open-mouthed, he
clambered up over the rail. Speechless, he stood on deck,
staring and smiling by turns. We had to suspend opera-
tions whilst Wetalltok and his throng, crowding around him,
plied him with such a rapid-fire of questions that the big mug
of tea we had given him grew cold in his hands.

By a map he showed us where the main camps of the is-
lands lay. With him as pilot, Wetalltok, and two of his
crew, I put off in the launch. Darkness had come before we
chugged into the gloom of a harbour some twenty miles away
where on a cobbled shore stood six tents of Eskimos. The
launch swept in, its rattle reechoing among the hills. Ex-

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

cited packs of dogs stood howling to the skies; from the tents
not a soul came forth until Wetalltok called; “Innuet,”
“Chimo,” and an old man haltingly came toward us.

Wetalltok explained to him who and what we were and in
a little time a group of natives was gathered around us shak-

Showing Mr. Flaherty’s routes about the islands. The Belcher Islands lie in the
southern part of Hudson Bay, just north of James Bay.

ing hands and exclaiming their surprise. From hiding
places amongst the rocks the women and children too came
down to greet us. Over old times and friends Wetalltok and
the Eskimos chattered the whole night through. We struck

WINTER ON WETALLTOK’S ISLANDS 55

off at daylight for the ship with all the Eskimos the launch
would hold. Clad in bearskin, dogskin, and eider feathers.

A SEVENTEENTH CENTURY MAP OF HUDSON BAY

Showing, in the oval, the large land masses that apparently were intended to
represent the Belcher Islands. Later the Belchers were shown on even the best
maps in dotted outline as tiny groups of islands. It was not until Mr. Flaherty
rediscovered them that they were shown in their proper position and proportions.

they were as primitive looking a lot as I have ever seen.
Said Salty Bill, regarding their wide-eyed and gaping masks

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

as we swung in alongside: “Well, sir, some queer fish comes
in with the tide.”

Within a week, kayaks catamaraned, the rifle-cracking
launch and dories had ferried the Laddie s cargo to shore to
where streams of old men, women, and children carried it to
the building huts, speculating the while as to what each
box and bale and bundle contained. For hours at a time
they watched the crew build the kablunak’s big igloo.
Prizes to them were waste bits of board and bent nails.

Until the sea ice formed there was a succession of bleak,
melancholy days with gales of driving sleet and rain. We
were taken up with work around the base getting our gear
and equipment in shape, making sledges and bartering for
dogs for the winter sledging. We made inland journeys over
the island upon which we lived, and cruises along its coast-
line, in the hope of locating sufficient driftwood for our
winter’s fuel. We had counted on getting driftwood but
nowhere could we find a supply to serve two huts the winter
through, so on the last open water of the year, we took the
Laddie across to the Great Whale Coast on the mainland and
returned with wood, laden to the rails. Of coal, we had some
four tons, all that was obtainable at Moose Factory, and
this, with the Laddie's cargo, I hoped would be enough.

With each new face that came drifting in, Wetalltok and
I pored over maps and listened to what he had to say about
the islands, and about his own hunting grounds in particular.
By the number of sleeps it took to travel, we could approxi-
mate the distance to the point whence he had come. The
magnitude of the country grew with each new tale.

With pieces of iron ore, Wetalltok explained to the

WINTER ON WETALLTOK’S ISLANDS 57

Eskimos that it was these rocks we came to seek. He told
them how the white man “boils” these rocks and fashions
the wonderful knives and guns and spear-heads which they
hold so dear. He told them how they could tell if the blue
rocks were iron ore by scratching them with flint, for the
scratches made red streaks like blood. Several among them
knew, they thought, where were the sevick (iron) rocks and
promised to bring in pieces when they came again, which
would be over the sea ice in winter.

December came in with calm, clear, frosty skies,
raked at night by glorious auroras and lighted by
day with floods of sunshine. The tiniest lakes
were soon closed with emerald seals, then the larger in quick
succession. The white rims of the harbour crept farther and
farther out from shore, and along the sweeping arc of the
sound itself a jagged ice edge sparkled in the sun. Within
two weeks the Laddie had ceased swinging from her chains
and the seal of winter was everywhere.

When Christmas came we kept open house for Wetalltok
and his throng and all the islanders who were camped near
by. Salty Bill improvised a tree. Spruce boughs, which
he had brought up from Moose for the purpose of making
spruce beer, he lashed to a pole. The candles were foot-
long miners’ dips, and the decorations were brightly labelled
fruit cans from the cook’s scrap pile. The presents were
black plug tobacco and matches for the men and needles
and combs and trade candy for the women and their flocks.
While Bill acted Santa Claus, Wetalltok’s gramophone
belched forth its rasping sounds. The lilt of “Tipperary”
and of Harry Lauder’s songs was contagious, but the
“ Preacher and the Bear,” with its monologue and the realistic
growling from a supposed bear, was a knock-out.

“Nanook! Nanook!” (the bear! the bear!) they ex-

■’ M'ft ■

I '

[

@ REVTLLOK FRERES.N.Y. ROBERT J FLA.HERTY, F. R- □ - S

TOOKTOO

(The Dee n )

Chief of Sikoslingmuit Eskimos
Southern Baffin Land

WINTER ON WETALLTOK’S ISLANDS 59

claimed, rocking with laughter, but the kiddies, half fright-
ened, clung to their mothers and rolled their almond eyes.

When the ceremonies around the tree were over. Bill
herded the teddy-bear youngsters around the stove and
popped corn, the most surprising thing by way of food they
had ever seen, “Cakeot nucky” (the gun food) they called
it, as enraptured, they watched the kernels popping in the
air.

We had, however, to bring to an end the celebrations
within the overcrowded house, for our nostrils could not be-
come attuned to the seal odour of their society. We wound
up the day by playing at nothing less than a game of baseball
on the harbour ice. It was coated with just enough snow
to make good ground. The Laddie s starboard side we used
as a back-stop. The bleachers were the Laddie's deck, bul-
warks, and rigging. If, what with our cumbersome fur
costumes, the game lacked speed, it did not lack interest for
the gallery — old men, women, young and old, and squalling
youngsters — especially if one of their kind was fortunate
enough to hit the ball, for, as they saw it, the pitcher’s role
was to hit the batter! Only darkness stopped us.

It was the second of January before the first sledges of
Eskimos came in from out of the mysterious west; strangers,
they proved to be, who had not heard of our advent on the
islands. When we had pulled their dogs and ours from a big
rolling ball of fight, Wetalltok led them indoors, ensconced
them on the floor, and thrust sea biscuits and big mugs of
scalding tea into their ready hands. It was a long time be-
fore we could question them, so lost were they in wonder of
the kablunak’s igloo, but finally we did extract the informa-

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

tion we had long been waiting for, that everywhere to west-
ward the sea ice was fit for travel.

At noon with a thirteen-dog team, Wetalltok, two of the
crew, and I, struck out for the west. The visitors with their
dogs and sleds accompanied us to a point less than a sleep
away where was, they thought, an outcrop of sevick rocks,
enough to load the kablunak’s ship many, many times.
They knew that it must be a sevick rock, for like the flesh
it showed red when they scratched it.

Winter bared its teeth as we filed over the ice. Wind
swooped down in gales; it scoured the fields and hills and
sent clouds of snow smoke whirling through the air. Within
the day we reached the point where the sevick lay. And
sevick it proved to be — not only in loose pieces wherever
were wind-swept patches of bare ground, but in a vein, from
twenty-five to thirty feet wide, running north and south
along the coast. Though the coast was veiled in drift, and
the vein outcropped intermittently, we traced it southward
for thirty miles, so vividly did the big red band of it stand
out through the black and white desolation. I was to find
out before the year was through that it was the richest and
largest occurrence to be found on all the islands.

There was no end to the gales and drifting snow. We
continued northwestward over lakes and ponds and difficult
boulder-stream ground into the interior. En route, we
hit the ice of the northern half of Wetalltok’s great lake,
which he had told me was so large that from the south end
looking north there was no land, just water, like the sea.
But as we travelled to its head we could see nothing, for the
drift was blinding.

WINTER ON WETALLTOK^S ISLANDS 6i

A half sleep from Wetalltok’s lake we struck the sea.
Drift again filled the air. The dogs wailed now and then;
some of them vomited from the cold. Suddenly they gave
tongue. Before I knew what had happened, Wetalltok was
at their head, rifle-cracking his long lash. Beyond him,
crouching over his snowblind, arms folded on knees and har-
poon in lap, sat an Eskimo. Through a breathing hole no
larger than the butt end of his harpoon he was watching for
seal to rise. Since dawn, Wetalltok said, he had been wait-
ing there. As quietly as may be we detoured and in a mo-
ment the drift had swallowed him.

By nightfall we picked up the orange square of an igloo’s
lighted window. It was the igloo of one Rainbow. Not a
seal had he killed for eight days, said he. All that he had
to live on was sea pigeons, from an open tidal pool near by.
Just before we arrived he had killed one — the first in two days
— and his wife, who was plucking it, held it up for me to see.
Though they knew that I had little or nothing in the way of
food to give away, their own troubles were forgotten in the
concern for the visitor who had come among them. While
Rainbow helped Wetalltok with the dogs out-of-doors, the
good wife hustled here and there putting to rights her igloo’s
disarray. She sent her daughters scurrying out-of-doors
for a pail of clean tea-water snow, while she unrolled my
sleeping bag, pulled off my kooletah, and laid it over her
feebly burning lamp so that it would be warm by morning.
Nor did she allow her children, while we ate our beans and
bacon, to hover around, for fear it would prove embar-
rassing. When they saw me crawl in to sleep, they spoke in
whispers. I dozed off to the hiss of driving snow and the

62 MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

low sounds of their speculations as to when the seals would
come.

I told Rainbow, as we made ready to leave, to come into
the base when I got back, and I would try to be hospitable
and kind, and, “Yes,” added Wetalltok, “be sure you keep
one eye open for the sevick rocks as you come.” Rainbow
said he would — that is, if he ever killed another seal; and
there was a chorus of laughter.

For hours two sundogs, slashed by rainbows which rose
straight up from the sea, flanked the sun. The snow smoke
was like lace drawn by some giant hand over the black knobs
of hills and the folds and wrinkles of the satin plains. But
the glory of the day was short. By three o’clock the sun
was smothered by the snow. When I mentioned igloo,
Wetalltok said, “Ouki,” and pointed with his whip stock to
a snow slope far ahead. As my eyes followed his direction,
I saw, nested together like so many hives, a village of snow
houses.

In the first igloo into which I crawled was the wreck of an
old man; his kindly face, seamed and weather-scarred, had
two shining dots for eyes. “There is no more hunting for
me,” he lamented, and pointed to his legs which were bent
and twisted by some disease. His daughter, no more than a
girl, followed us in. Abashed by our gaze she furiously
shook the snow powder from her furs. “She does the hunt-
ing for this old man,” Wetalltok explained. “Every day
with the old man of the igloo adjoining she goes on the
ice after seals. Every night for ten days she says they have
been coming home with sledges empty — they have not even
seal oil for their lamps. A salmon, now and then, which the

WINTER ON WETALLTOK’S ISLANDS 63

old women catch in the ponds near by, is all the food they
have.” But they all forgot their troubles in their delight at
seeing us. Wetalltok and they, with one of my flickering
candles and the kablunak’s good tea twice boiled between
them, yarned half the night through.

For two days we crawled over the mouths of deep bays
and in-draughts of the island’s south coast. Valueless days
for reconnaissance, however, for impenetrable drift still drove
through the air.

The glimpse of showers of sparks which a chimney vomited
to the gale told us that at last we were home. In a moment
more I was standing before the crackling stove, rubbing
cheeks, ears, and nose, which felt as if they were made of
parchment and burning warm.

Until midnight, to the tune of the drift lashing the cabin
walls and the wailing of the wind among the eaves, we talked.
“ ’Tis the land of the gales, sir,” said Salty Bill. “In the last
nine days you has been gone but one day come clear. In
the cracker last night, rifle shots woke me. ’Twas the big
provision tent strippin’ to pieces. An’ these winds makes it
hard for the huskies, sir. Every time there is a knockin’ on
the door I knows that one of them is on the other side an’
with ‘kopunga’ (hungry), on his lips. They says there is
no seals, save out in the rough ice, an’ they’re not venturin’
there now for fear of bein’ swept to sea. ’Tis the rare salmon
or two what pulls them through, sir, an’ what little grub I
has been givin’ ’em.

“But we’ve got to close down on dolin’ out more grub,
for ’tis meltin’ away. I have to ration Wetalltok’s family
in the hut now, for the huskies has been hangin’ around an’

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

of course, sir, husky fashion, they just had to share with them
until themselves went hungry.”

Wetalltok looked worried when he came in the next morn-
ing. He gave me to understand that he was not going to
keep on living off my dwindling supply of food, but was going
to take his family and go afield with the others. When I
told him that he couldn’t be spared, he begged for one of the
teams and rations for ten days. He left the following morn-
ing, saying he was not coming back without seal.

Ill

The gales and cold kept on; the last of the big mili-
tary tents housing our food and gear was stripped
into ribbons. One black night we were awakened by
the pandemonium of fighting dogs. Tookalook’s old master
dog was chewing at a big sealed tin of bully beef, tearing
it open, strips of tin jammed between his bleeding fangs.
Old boots, whips, or harness, and even a pup (Tookalook lost
three in as many days) were delicacies for them these times.

On the twelfth day was ended the biggest drifter of the
year. The cabin was snowed up to the roof — the dogs
scampered over it. Wetalltok’s hut was completely buried;
a shaft straight down through the snow marked its entrance.
The forlorn Laddie was drifted bulwarks high.

“We may get good weather now,” was old Tookalook’s
observation as he scanned the brick-red sunset and pointed
to the stars outcropping above it in the steely sky. “ Wetall-
tok, I think, will now get his chance for seals.” Bill and I
were long since busy with supper-making when old Tooka-
look popped his head in through the door and asked me for
my “big eye” (telescope), saying that Wetalltok’s wife from
the lookout hill saw the black specks of a team coming in to-
ward us. Tookalook wondered if by some rare fortune it
could be Wetalltok.

It was not long before the din of knocking brought us out-
of-doors to where on the lookout every man, woman, and

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

child stood watching intently the slowly moving black forms
of an approaching team. Wetalltok it was, they thought,
but as to whether he was coming loaded or empty, they could
not yet tell. The gloom thickened and the sledge crawled
like a snail. I went indoors for a moment for the ship’s big
glass, when suddenly the wild exclamation “Netsuk!” re-
sounded through the air.

“Wetalltok it is, sir,” said Bill, “an’ what’s more he’s
bringin’ home the seals.”

“How many?” I asked as Wetalltok waded through the
crowd toward us.

“Timietow,” said he, holding up ten fingers.

The babel of some forty dogs shattered the peace and
quiet of the first calm night in many days. Around Wetall-
tok, his young son, and Tookalook, the dogs, just out of
reach of Wetalltok’s cracking whip, circled belly-down, like
the wolves they were. Their eyes, reflecting the lantern
light, shone like bolts of fire. Their muzzles were white
with froth of hunger. Constantly, Wetalltok kept cracking
his whip around their circle, a dread lash with which he could
split an ear or cut clear through their tough hides. But one
or another would attempt a desperate sally for the seal meat
which old Tookalook was portioning. They were too intent
to fight save when some poor devil was caught by Wetalltok’s
lash. The pain of it would send him bounding straight in the
air, or maddened beyond all control he would bury his fangs
in the unfortunate nearest him. When Bill and I turned
toward camp the dogs were sleeping and Wetalltok and his
tribe had crawled into the feast of the warmth-giving seal
for which they had waited so long.

■y

5f.

WINTER ON WETALLTOK’S ISLANDS 67

There were no hungry hordes of hangers-on about the hut
from this time on, for everywhere, Wetalltok said, the big ice
had been broken by the gale, and seal meat was in plenty
in the encampments of the islanders.

By the middle of March the days grew long and warm.
Cottony clouds sailed through a sky resplendently blue.
There were glorious days of sledging. We made in one day
distances that had required three.

Toward the end of May, Wetalltok and I, storm-bound
on a rocky point some thirty miles from camp, were awak-
ened one wild night by the boom and grind and milling of the
big ice tumbling before a southeast gale. When daylight
came the threads of the outer coast were broken by gigantic
rafts of ice. Beyond them stood smoking sea. There had
been sleet and snow and rain for two days past, and the
snow-covered ice that lay between us and the camp was like
a sponge charged with water. Here and there were pools
so deep that the dogs swam, the sledge floated, and we, fol-
lowing after, waded through depths above the knee. By
dark, camp was reached. We soaked in its good red heat.

For a fortnight Bill had been over-hauling the little
Nastapoka — the self-same craft, the reader will remember,
with which I made the first attempt to reach Wetalltok’s
islands. Upon her I depended for the summer cruises
around the island and for the last trip down the bay toward
the railway frontier. For the Laddie^ since only Bill re-
mained of her crew (the others had been sent across to the
mainland), had been abandoned. In fact, her bulwarks,
yards, masts, and arms had been broken up two months
before to supply the deficiency in our fuel.

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

June came in with days long and gloriously warm. House-
flies buzzed over the sunlit panes of our windows. Bumble-
bees hovered among the mosses. Young would-be hunters
with miniature bows and arrows stalked for yellowlegs, and
aimed mockingly at the flocks of geese that came sailing
overhead. Wetalltok, old Tookalook, and their families
squatted by their kayak frames, put on fresh sealskin covers,
while Bill worked upon the Nastapoka^ which stood by.

Hunting-gear and summer clothes had long since been
made. The Nastapoka stood ready to slide into the sea.
On the memorable seventeenth of June we were awakened by
a strangely familiar sound. It was the wash of surf.

IS a wind-ridden land, sir, and no mistake,” said

Salty, as we crawled into our diminutive cabin for

an hour’s sleep. The Nastapoka rolled and heaved
at the end of her chains. For three days the drive of sleet
and rain resounded like blasts of sand on our cabin roof and
walls. The only breaks in its monotony were wild squalls,
strong enough, though we rode under bare poles, to heel us

over,

“Yes, sir,” said Bill, continuing, “now I minds how we
looked forward to the breaking up, and how when it came
our uncivil times would be over, sir. But here we are, sir,
ten days from camp and the log on the lean side of fifty
miles.” After a rumble of oaths that would have made a
bloody pirate feel at home. Bill dozed off to sleep.

We bowled out the next morning, and over big wallops of
seas, sailing close-hauled along the main south coast into the
west. We crossed the mouths of bays and in-draughts so
deep that their inland shores were thin lines, gray-blue. As
in winter, we only bee-lined from point to point as the
weather willed, cruising, however, strips of coast which the
sledge trip had not touched.

At the last north camp of islanders, first among the
swarms of kayakers who scooted out to where we were slip-
ping anchor in the harbour was old Mukpollo, his Billiken
mask smiling welcome. “Walrus there are,” said he, after

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

we had “chimoed,” shaken hands, and given him some black
plug tobacco for a pipe that, upside down, poked out from his
lips. “My own eyes have seen them,” said he, “a whole is-
land of them. And my ! ” — as his eyes swept the Nastapokd s
decks — “but you have the fine omiak for getting them.”

But “How far is it?” was our first question.

“Oh, not far,” said he, and he pointed northeastward over
open sea. His idea of “not far,” it turned out, was a long
day’s kayaking; but the picture he painted, as only an
Eskimo can where game is involved, decided us. Mukpollo
came aboard at dawn — every man of the encampment clam-
oured to come, too — and with his kayak slung up on deck
we sailed away.

At sundown we picked up the half-round rock of a small
island which the log said stood forty miles at sea. A rookery
it proved to be, as we crawled close in; over it like pin-points
in the sky, as black and thick as flies, swarms of sea pigeons
rose in panic. We were looking for a landing amongst the
windings of its cobbled shores when suddenly we sagged in
the trough of a big ground swell; the Nastapoka struck, and
the sea that followed swung us in upon a nest of reefs. Bill
jumped into the surf with a line around his middle, and half
swam, half tumbled to land. Scrambling up to a huge
boulder he wrapped around the line. But in less time than
it takes to tell, the Nastapoka^ her bottom broken, was slosh-
ing full, and everything that was floatable rose out of the
hatchways and drifted in to shore.

Gloomily enough we surveyed the hulk — which, half sub-
merged, rocked to and fro in the lazy ground swell — and the
wreckage that we had laid out before us on the rocks;

WINTER ON WETALLTOK’S ISLANDS

blankets outspread to dry, a side of bacon, sugar now turning
to syrup, and a dripping bag of tea. We made a roaring
driftwood fire and while we stood around it waiting for the
steaming clothes we wore to dry, we munched sodden sea
biscuit and gulped scalding tea and discussed pro and con
just what was best to do.

Our only means of transport, I pointed out, were the kayak
and our canoe. “And yes,” said Bill, “some sixty miles of
sea to use them in.” But Mukpollo said there were four
small islands, albeit they were surf-bound, strung along the
way to the nearest point of the main coast. He mapped
them in the sand, and then, leading up to the island’s crest,
pointed to the gray dot of the first of them which appeared
to be about fifteen miles away.

“Well, sir,” said Bill, turning from one of the gloomy sur-
veys of the Nastapoka s corpse swinging among the rocks,
“ if I could find me a decent size o’ driftwood, sir, I wants one
try at salvagin’ before we leaves.” And though he led a
hope forlorn I gave in.

He and Mukpollo came back within an hour carrying on
their shoulders a log of driftwood that for these latitudes was
surprisingly large. “’Tis a lucky find, sir,” said Bill as he
threw it down. “There’s ne’er one more like it on the is-
land,” and I caught a gleam of hope in his eye. He un-
folded his plan. “The log is what we calls the Spanish
winch, sir,” said he, “and when I makes it we’ll have the
Nastapoka^ if the weather holds, up on dry land.”

“But look here. Bill,” said I, “there are holes in the
Nastapoka that you or I could crawl in.”

“ I minds that, sir, but with canvas patches we’ll tar them

72 MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

and patch her over, and I think, sir, they’ll see us to the
camp.”

Willingly enough we started in. Bill first ran a line from
the Nastapoka in two hundred feet on shore to a narrow crack
in a ledge of rock. In the crack he inserted the flukes of two
anchors. In the round of the anchor flukes he shoved the
driftwood log which, after infinite pains, Mukpollo and he
with hunting knives had made fairly smooth. Around the
log he took two turns of the line which led to xht Nastapoka s
nose, and with chains we took half turns in the ends of the
winching log and, inserting stakes, began winding.

Hour after hour the winding kept on, to the tune of Bill’s
creaking Spanish winch, the slosh of surf flowing in and out
the Nastapoka' s wounds, and Bill’s ‘‘She comes, me byes,
she comes.” There were aching backs and blistered hands
for every foot we gained. On the morning of the third day
Bill pointed to lowering clouds banked out in the west.
‘‘If there is a cracker in them,” said he, “there’ll be nothing
left us but the Nastapoka' s bones.” But the “cracker”
kept away, and inch by inch the Nastapoka came. By night-
fall she was safe.

Bill’s plan, however, of patching her temporarily with
tarred canvas was not so successful. In one place her plank-
ing for four feet in length and one and a half feet in width,
and the ribs that supported them, were gone. So three of
us, at dawn of the first calm day, struck out in the canoe for
camp, a hop-skip-and-jump, as it were, between the surf-
bound islands that intervened. Within seven days we
were back again with extra oakum, tar, and tools, and six
lengths of precious board, which, since every scrap of wood

WINTER ON WETALLTOK’S ISLANDS 73

about the camp had long ago been used up for fuel, we had
to rip from the walls themselves. In three weeks the Nasta-
poka again was launched, but a more patched and bandaged
craft never rode the seas. With relays of the crew bailing
the while. Bill finally shoved her battered nose into the mill
pond of camp harbour.

By the first of August our iron ore expeditions were, as far
as circumstances would permit, complete. We had found,
all told, five ranges lying east and west from one another, an
average of six miles apart, and extending north and south a
distance of thirty miles. The extent of iron-ore-bearing
rocks actually outcropping was more than one hundred
square miles.

Two of my crew had left by sledge in early January for the
mainland, to proceed thence southward along the coast and
overland to the line, taking with them plans of deposits, and,
for analysis, samples of the ore. They were to return with
a party of Sir William’s engineers who were to report upon
the commerciability of what we had found.

After weeks of waiting, shouts of “Omiak! Omiak!” rang
through the air, and a York boat wing-and-wing came bowl-
ing up the Sound. The engineers en route since the first of
June were my own father, who, wearing a two-months-
old-growth of beard, I hardly recognized; Doctor Moore,
geologist, and W. H. Howard, surveyor, who besides claim-
surveying was to make astronomical observations for the
still skeptical government at Ottawa. I shall never forget
my difficulties that memorable day trying to play host and
read the while the long year’s mail.

Within a fortnight the ore examinations were complete.

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

and the visitors sailed out for Great Whale River on the
mainland, at which point they were to reach the fur ship
when it called in southward bound. At Moose Factory,
they were to await the coming of Bill and myself on the
Nastapokuy then by canoe we would all journey together up
river to the rail frontier.

Since the Nastapoka could carry only our food, instru-
ments, and personal gear, I divided the hut and its furnish-
ings among Wetalltok, Tookalook, Mukpollo, and their
families. There was everything — dishes, an old mirror, old
magazines, powder, caps, and cartridges, knives, axes, old
clothing, cloth, and old shoes. As a special payment the
gramophone and records went to Calla, our cook; a rifle to
Mukpollo; the canoe to Tookalook, and to Wetalltok our
poor old pianola, much scarred and stained and out of tune
from rough transport and misuse. But to Wetalltok it was
the most wonderful thing in all the world — “big box with
the many insides!”

On the thirteenth of September, with the Nastapoka deep
laden with our personal gear, films, instruments, and food
— Bill and I said our last good-byes . . . regretfully

enough pulled up anchor, the crowd on shore gloomily watch-
ing us, and sailed out through the harbour past the old
Laddie s stranded hulk, and on into the Sound. Wetalltok,
old Tookalook, and Mukpollo followed us for a while, waving
as they ran along the shore.

I received some letters a year later from Great Whale
River, dated three months before, and in them was news of
Wetalltok’s islands. Rainbow had gone mad, the result of

ALLEGOO

.•i (Shining Water)

'i. S/ZcosZ/n^mu/l: Eskimo Woman

? Southern BafFfn Land

WINTER ON WETALLTOK’S ISLANDS 75

starvation. For many days he had been at large with the
Winchester and cartridges that I had given him, spreading
terror among the islanders. To save themselves they had
had to kill him.

Poor old Tookalook, in less than a month of my departure
had dared the crossing to the Great Whale Coast in the canoe
I had given him, and his kayak, catamaraned. Big winds
had caught him. The canoe had been found, bottom up, on
the mainland shore.

A letter from good old Mavor, the factor at Great Whale,
read:

Perhaps you will remember having given your pianola to Wetalltok
just before you left the Belcher Islands last fall. Well, Wetalltok was
stuck with that pianola on his hands; he couldn’t take it into his igloo,
and he couldn’t live in your cabin for he had, of course, no fuel. So he
conceived the idea of sledging that pianola over to me — it seemed that
you told him I would be keen to buy it — but how he could transport a
full-size pianola over eighty-five miles of sea ice, and some of it rafted
mighty high at that, was more than I could see, but he did it — brought it
right into Great Whale Post, only to find that I wasn’t there, for I had
been transferred in the fall, south to Fort George (i86 miles away).
So he kept on down the coast having obtained supplies from the factor
on the strength of the sale of the pianola to me, and after the Lord knows
how many days, he came sledging in one day at nightfall, right into my
post yard, with a “Chimo” and a “Here, Angarooka, is the box with
the many insides.” The thing worked, you’ll be surprised to hear,
though some of its notes were what Wetalltok called “sick sounds”!

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Flaherty, R. J.: “The Belcher Islands of Hudson Bay: Their Dis-
covery and Exploration,” Geog, Review, vol. V, no. 66, pp. 433-58, 1918.

Moore, E. S., “The Iron Formation on the Belcher Islands, Hudson

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

Bay, with Special Reference to its Origin and its Associated Algal Lime-
stone,” "Jour, of GeoL, vol. XXVI, pp. 412—38, 1918.

“Iron Formation on Belcher Islands, Hudson Bay,” with Special
Reference to its Origin and its Associated Algal Limestone,” Bull, of the
Geol. Soc. of Am.., vol. XXIX, p. 90 (abstract only), 1918.

“Iron Deposits on the Belcher Islands, Hudson Bay,” Monthly Bull,
of the Can. Min. Inst., no. 82, Feb., 1919, pp. 196-206, 1919.

“Ore Deposits of Arctic Canada,” Eng. and Min. four., vol. CX, pp.
306-400, 1920.

Woodbridge, D. E., “Iron-Ore Deposits on Belcher Islands,” Eng.
and Min. four., vol. CXII, pp. 251-54, 1921.

“Iron-Bearing Rock of Belcher Islands, Hudson Bay,” by G. A.
Young, Canadian Geol. Survey, 1922.

PART III

EXPLORATION OF NORTHERN UNGAVA

This narrative begins at Great Whale River on that
memorable night in March, 1912, when, as the reader
may remember, one Pitchalock came to old Harold’s
hut with the news that the icefields over which for months
I had been planning to cross to Wetalltok’s islands had been
broken by the gales. The failure to get to Wetalltok’s is-
lands in the diminutive Nastapoka^ the five months’ long
wait for the sea ice to form, and then this freak break-up of
the ice, knocked all my plans to pieces. There was left me
out of the wreckage, however, one plan that I had long hoped
to carry through. This was an exploration of the interior
of northern Ungava.^

This interior was the largest unexplored area remaining on
the mainland of northern Canada. The map of it was a
blank. Low speaks of it as follows:

There still remains about 120,000 square miles of the northern portion
of the peninsula between Hudson and Ungava bays, totally unknown to
any one except the wandering bands of Eskimos who occasionally pene-
trate inland from the coast.^

'Robert J. Flaherty: “Two Traverses Across Ungava Peninsula, Labrador,” Geo-
graphical Review, vol. VI, no. 2, August, 1918 (American Geographical Society, New York).

'“Previous explorations of the Labrador Peninsula lay to southward through the Indian
country. The northernmost started from Richmond Gulf, and following the Clearwater,
the Larch and the Koksoak Rivers, was first taken by Doctor Mendry in 1824 for the
Hudson’s Bay Company. Doctor Mendry’s expedition is the basis for Ballantyne’s
famous boys’ story, “Ungava.” Low made the same crossing in 1896 and mapped and
geologically explored the country.

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

At only one point had the interior been penetrated. This
was when Low himself, sledging in some forty-five miles
from the coast of Hudson Bay, discovered and explored the
course of Kasiagaluk, the Great Seal Lake of the Eskimos,
until the starving condition of his dogs forced him to retreat.
Of Kasiagaluk, which he called Lake Minto, Low speaks
as follows:

Kasiagaluk or Lake Minto is one of the largest lakes of the Labrador
Peninsula, being according to the Eskimos, upwards of one hundred
miles longd

With the exception of Low’s fragmentary map of Kasiaga-
luk and his route thither, all other details of lakes and streams,
as shown on all the maps, were merely copies of maps made
by the Eskimos. What Low had seen was merely the be-
ginning. How big was Kasiagaluk — how big its discharge,
the mysterious river which wound down the peninsula’s far
slope to Ungava Bay.^ And all this was but one thread of
a maze of waterways hidden in the silences of what seemed
to me then illimitable barrens of the great peninsula!

Besides, there was the west coast of Ungava Bay to ex-
plore for iron ore. Along this coast, much of it shown on
the maps as nothing but a dotted line, I might intersect an
extension of the inaccessible iron ore series long since known
to exist along the lower reaches of the Koksoak, some two
hundred miles southward. Indeed, to find an iron ore series
similar to those on the Nastapokas and such as I hoped to
find on the Belcher Islands, was the object of the undertaking.

*See A. P. Low: “Report on Explorations in the Labrador Peninsula along the East
Main, Koksoak, Hamilton, Manicuagan and Portions of Other Rivers in 1892—93-94-
95,” Report L of Annual Kept. Geol. Survey oj Canada, vol. VIII for 1895, Ottawa, 1896.

EXPLORATION OF NORTHERN UNGAVA 8i

With old Harold and Nero I discussed ways and means.
The distance from Great Whale north a hundred and fifty
miles to White Whale Point, thence inland across the great
interior to what Nero called the eastern sea (Ungava Bay)
was roughly, as we should wind, seven hundred miles — not a
great distance, as Nero pointed out, for sea coast travel; but
inland where “him, no seal, no tooktoo, no nothing,” a more
difficult matter. “Since I am small boy,” Nero went on,
“deer, him all same gone.” Meaning that the vast herds
of countless thousands that once wandered through the
illimitable barrens were now no more. “Dogs, him
starve,” said Nero, referring to his journey with Low, inland
to the great lake, Kasegaleek, and eastward along its coast,
until the starving condition of the dogs forced them to re-
treat to the sea.

For food we must depend entirely upon the supply we
could carry on our sledges. Nero would be unable to go
with me all the way. His wife refused, in the face of the
utmost of the fur trade blandishment and all that I could
offer, to let him be gone on so long a journey. .We did,
however, arrange that he should accompany us as far inland
as he had travelled. This point, the one he had made with
Low, we estimated to be one fourth of the total journey from
sea to sea. When we reached this point I would cull the best
dogs from both teams, and take on the additional supplies
from Nero’s sledge, leaving enough to see Nero back to the
coast.

Harold’s negotiations for two men were protracted. One,
Omarolluk, who, though a newcomer at Great Whale, had
already won for himself a reputation as a hunter and a

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

sledging man, was, Harold considered, the man most desir-
able for the trip. His wife, too, kept him for several days in
a state of indecision. Harold finally won her over by assur-
ing her that she and hers would live on rations at the post
during Omarolluk’s absence, and to clinch the bargain gave
her a silk bandanna, some beads, and sweeties for her young-
sters. To Omarolluk, however, the angarooka’s food and
the princely wage, eighty-five beavers a month (almost
three times the post wage) — inducements such as I should
have relied upon — were of small moment. But Harold’s
picture of the big deer-killing in spring where the great deer
migrations ford the Koksoak River inland from Ungava
Bay, which he, Omarolluk, would take part in, provided
that we accomplished the journey, proved to be the winning
card.

Omarolluk secured, Harold swung into line for him a sledg-
ing partner, Wetunik by name, whose principal stock in
trade I later found was his smiling disposition and his
penchant for the angarooka’s good nucky.

Finally our food supply was checked and overhauled.
This was done on the trade-shop floor for the benefit of
Omarolluk and Wetunik, who by dint of hefting — weights
and measures being of course unknown to them — were
finally made satisfied, jubilant in fact, over what they
felt sure was a good and sufficient outfit.

At break of day we started. Harold ran up the ffag.
Omarolluk’s long whip cracked through the air. The howl-
ing din of the dogs stopped suddenly. They lunged ahead.
The sledges rocked like ships at sea behind the multitude of
their galloping heels. The waving throngs, the drift-swept

NASCAUPIE INDIAN CHIEF

N orthern Labrador

(5) REVTUL.DN’ FRSRESfNVr

EXPLORATION OF NORTHERN UNGAVA 83

cabins, the flag, ironed out against the stark steel sky, soon
dropped behind the shoulder of an intervening hill.

Our journey along the coast was familiar ground. Here
and there we encamped with old friends, deeply interested,
all of them, in the prospects of our long journey. The
kindly souls gave us their best advice of the country inland
as far as they in the old deer-hunting days had wandered.
All was easy travelling until we came to the rough ice off Gulf
Hazard. Here Nero’s sledge from a pressure ridge some
twenty feet high pitched over a sheer wall of ice. One of its
two-inch plank runners was broken clean across the grain.
We retreated a dozen miles to the encampment of one Jim
Crow. With him we bartered for a new sledge. Much
scurrying on the part of Nero from the sledge owner’s camp
to mine and back again, more times than I have the patience
to tell. “Jim Crow, him say yes, all right, your paper [order]
to Koksoak angarooka. Tobaccomik, sweetieloo, him
plenty; only now him want matches and maybe bead his
baby.” And so it went on, until finally Nero’s blandly smil-
ing mask, poking itself through my camp door, announced
that “Jim Crow, him full.” The order that my numb
fingers made out on Great Whale Post resembled somewhat
the inventory of a Woolworth store.

Nero was made much of by his admiring fellows, not only
as my valet de chambre (God save the mark!) but did he not
know all the intricacies of the white man’s tongue so that he
could satisfy them upon all the points upon which they
were curious — my safety razor, my gun, my kit of medicines
which Nero warned them were not meant for food, and the
thermometer? I kept night and morning records. As I

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

crawled out at nightfall and hung the thermometer upon the
point of a harpoon sticking in the snow, a throng gathered
around me. Nero was called upon to explain. When he
had concluded he translated for my benefit. “I
tell ’em,” said he, “when white string [the mercury] go up
over hole [zero on the scale] everything all same water, but
him go down under hole, she’s all ice.” Omarolluk, how-
ever, looked doubtful. He kept looking at the tiny ther-
mometer swaying in the wind, and then out upon the miles
of frozen sea. For the life of me I could not understand why
he was so puzzled. Said Nero by way of explanation:
“Omarolluk say, your little thing can’t do, only cold make
all that ice.”

We were not long out from Jim Crow’s camp when we
again entered rough ice at Gulf Hazard. On all the thousand
miles of coast of Hudson Bay there is no ice so dangerous,
for here, through a mere slot through huge lumps of hills,
discharge the waters of Richmond Gulf, in a long, writhing
tongue that cleaves its way over two miles straight out to sea.
We were forced to detour eight miles from land, and even
here Nero, testing the ice with his harpoon, drove it through.
“Him Adelite [Indian] name, ‘qua qua chickawan,’” said
Nero. “She mean,” he explained, “‘him swallow quick.’”

The next day, though it was distant thirty miles, we
picked up the smoke of Nastapoka Falls twisting in the
sky — the landmark we had long been looking for. From it
we were to strike inland across the big interior. In the
seven days we had been journeying along the coast, not a
seal had been killed. All we had in the way of fresh meat
was some fifty pounds of blubber for the dogs’ diet of corn-

EXPLORATION OF NORTHERN UNGAVA 85

meal. And now, Nero reminded us, we were leaving the
sea and the life-sustaining seal it held. He wondered if it
were not better to camp until a seal kill had been made and
feed up our not over-thriving dogs for the big trip ahead; but
this might mean several days’ delay. Anyway, concluded
Nero, if the dogs did not pick up we might camp on one of
the lakes of the interior and cut down through the ice on a
chance for fish. Marked by a monument of cobblestones,
we left a cache of rations sufficient to help Nero on his return,
and ourselves as well, if by any chance we had to retreat.

With Nero’s team in the lead, we swung up the long steep
slopes of the coastal range, whose seared and wrinkled crest
loomed above us in the eastern sky. We climbed into stiff
winds as that memorable day wore on. Whirlpools and
eddies of snow came racing around and through us as they
birled toward the big wide void of sea. The western sky
was red before we reached a respite from the climb, a plateau
that led us over a miniature cobbled plain to a deep gulf
among the hills. With a last long look over the sea below,
and with a “Good-bye seals!’’ from Nero, we were soon
buried in the ranges.

During the next four days we covered less than thirty
miles, for we were lost most of the time, so confusing were the
slots and grooves of valleys through which we travelled.
Nero would have to climb to lookouts and signal to us, the
handful of dots strung out in some pocket far below him,
the course to follow. We often toiled only to find our valley
a blind, at its end a sheer wall facing us. And then to work
out of it meant both teams and ourselves harnessed to a
single sledge.

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

Along the coast driftwood had been our fuel. Now all we
could depend upon was an occasional stunted tree that grew
in some deeper wind-sheltered pocket of the hills. As we
worked into the ranges even these disappeared. All that
was left us were the creeping willows and trailing spruces
that, with snowshoes as shovels, and on hands and knees, we
burrowed for.

But the fifth day the hills around us changed to long, curv-
ing slopes, with shallow saucers of valleys between them.
The valleys, moreover, inclined toward the east, which meant
(said Nero) that we had reached the point where the water
“him go Ungava Bay.”

Toward nightfall we reached the crest of the last big hill.
To eastward, far below us, lay miles and miles of snow-
smoking plain, the chaotic face of it sprinkled with multi-
tudes of boulders which stood out of the satiny waste like
pin points of jet. The blur of horizon was broken here and
there by solitary hills. While we gazed and debated upon
what valley to descend, the snow smoke settled down and
the middle distance resolved itself into paralleling threads
that wound and twisted around a sweep of ice whose far
horizon was a landless rim — the ice, said Nero, of Kasegaleek,
the great seal lake of the Eskimos.

For four days we continued eastward over the ice of
Kasegaleek. The only break in the monotony of low, bar-
ren granite shores was the skeleton of a tepee frame — a gaunt
silhouette against the sky — an old camp of Indians who used
to come here in the few short weeks of summer from their
own hunting grounds within the limit of trees, far southward.
At another place Nero pointed out the spot where, when he

EXPLORATION OF NORTHERN UNGAVA 87

was a boy, his father had made a deer kill — so many, said
he, that it had taken three days to cut them up. Here as
everywhere through the great interior, Nero continued,
the Eskimos used to come in from the coast in the early
spring, on the watch for migrations as they worked north
from the Indian’s land of trees. Sometimes there were so
many that if one put his ear to the ground he could hear
them. “Him sound like thunder, very; but now,” la-
mented Nero, “deer, him gone. Huskie — him starve.”

He spoke of three families who, several winters before, had
struck out from the Koksoak across the interior for Hudson
Bay — “Nobody see ’um no more.”

Over the winding arms and bays of Kasegaleek, on the
evening of the fourth day we came to the point which Nero
said marked the lake’s halfway. This was, as we had
arranged,.the place where Nero and his team would turn back,
being the extreme point to which we could economically
continue with both teams. We took stock of our supplies and
dogs. As to the supplies we had no concern, but the teams
were failing. They must get red meat. Nero proposed that
Omarolluk and he take three days off, deer-hunting in the
hills inland, while Wetunik cut down in the ice for fish. But
three days of hunting and four holes through seven feet of ice
failed to yield us the meat of which the dogs stood so much
in need.

Notwithstanding the situation, Omarolluk and Wetunik
were willing enough to continue. Omarolluk argued that,
though the team were lean and impoverished, the last three
days of inaction had rested them; moreover, the worst of the
going — the coastal ranges — was over, and from now on.

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

through Kasegaleek and down the unknown river to the
sea, would be the easiest going of the journey. Not only
that, but there would be always the chance for fish wherever
a rapid might be open; then surely somewhere along its long
winding course we must come across the trail of some little
band of deer. Of the twenty-three dogs available Omarolluk
culled thirteen and took all the food supply from Nero’s
sledge, save enough to enable Nero to return to Great Whale.
Through the early hours of our last night together we sewed
boots and broken gear and mended harness, with specula-
tions now and then as to the character of the country that
lay ahead. With Nero’s help I retouched my vocabulary,
for the extent of my Eskimo was such as “ Make the fire,”
“Which way is the wind?” and those most-used phrases of
all, “I am hungry” and “Is it far?”

At daylight Nero struck out for distant Great Whale and
Omarolluk, Wetunik and I for Ungava Bay. We had a cold,
hard day’s work of it; then, at camping time, that which we
had taken for the lake’s main body we found to be nothing
but a long bay, and the head of it a .barrier of steep granite
hills. Through all the following day, as drifting and as cold,
we retraced our steps, camping at nightfall on the spot
where we had taken leave of Nero two days before.

For three days we continued northeast over Kasegaleek,
across the mouths of multitudes of mysterious bays that led
God knows where, through flocks of rocks of islands, over
long traverses and through narrows in steep granite hills.
And everywhere the rims of frozen lake and the profiles of
the ranges were blurred by the smoking snow. We lost
hours, huddled for shelter within the sledge-load’s lee, wait-

EXPLORATION OF NORTHERN UNGAVA 89

ing while Omarolluk scouted among the hills. The sleeping
dogs were often drifted over before he signalled his three
shots for us to come on.

On the evening of the fourth day, rime, spiralling in the
acid air, and the vivid green of an open rapid, marked
Kasegaleek’s end and the beginning of an unknown river’s
long career to sea. “Here is the place for fish,” thought I, as
we drew up alongside, “with nothing like the cutting of
seven-foot holes through Kasegaleek’s thick hide to stand in
the way.” Omarolluk thought so too; so we camped near by.

A day we spent trolling and watching, spears in hand, but
not a sign of fish did we see. There were constant reminders
of the hunger of the team. They fought like demons over
their corn meal and tallow. With whips and snowshoes and
clubs we kept them from annihilating one poor brute that
for two days past had been slowly breaking. Omarolluk
shook his head as he swept a hand across its ribs.

For three days we slowly followed the loops and turns of
the river. There was but one interest, a covey of ptarmigan,
the first life we had seen all the way in from Hudson Bay.
We came upon them so suddenly that there was no time to
use a gun. Whip in hand, Omarolluk crept toward them.
The whip trailed out behind him. Foot by foot he ap-
proached. The covey broke. Forward like a shot the
long six-fathom lash flashed through the air. The covey
flew up and sailed over the shoulder of a hill — but where
Omarolluk’s lash had flattened out lay a ptarmigan, dead
upon the snow.

The trough-like valley of the ^•iver deepened as we went
on, with big flanks of granite hills rising steeply at either

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

hand. The stunted trees that wound in a straggling line
along their forefeet emphasized the chaotic desolation that
loomed above them. Now and then the bluster of March
winds blocked out the hills and the view ahead, and
forced us to fall, groping, close in to shore. There were bad
breaks, too, in the slow-going underfoot, giving way at one
never-to-be-forgotten point to a frozen rapid nine miles long.
Sheer walls on either hand forced us into troughs, deep pits
and gouges. The rough-and-tumble played out the dogs.
When Omarolluk and Wetunik returned from a fruitless day’s
search for deer, hardly one of them had energy enough left
to break out from its blanket of drifted snow. Their day
and night’s rest did them little good, for when we started on
the journey once more we could hardly urge them on. The
leader, at one time the jauntiest dog we had, finally lay down
and refused to rise, but whined and licked her aching paws
when we drew near. Omarolluk unharnessed her, and she
rode lashed aboard the sledge.

Constantly our eyes roved for signs of game, scanning the
nooks and crannies of the drift-swept hills and the grooves of
valleys that among them wound down to the river’s shore,
and among the straggling clumps of spectral trees; but on
all that hopelessness of white and gray all that lived and
breathed and moved were our own black dots, bending
slowly over the loops and curves of that endless stream.

The day deepened to a gloom of gray. The drift thickened
before a rising wind. Omarolluk halted the team. Stand-
ing up on the sledge load he scanned the shoreline for signs
of camping ground. Suddenly he jumped down. On his
hands and knees he began brushing away the newly drifted

- 'mm-^

hBp- )f^ ._ , • '

yssmtr

<■

f?*

.jf- o<-

j^‘

''^v i, ' -«>“™"
I^ «e» 2EW^_

ESKIMO HUNTING SCENES

As sketched by Wetailtok. The upper two sketches show two hunters and their dogs
approaching seals on the ice. The next lower drawings show hunters creeping up on
caribou. The lower sketch shows the end of a successful seal hunt.

EXPLORATION OF NORTHERN UNGAVA 91

snow. He beckoned me near. “Fresh deer tracks!” cried
he, “and not far from here.” By pantomime he made me
understand that they were sure to be yarded in some deep
valley among the hills. Telling Wetunik and me to keep
on to the first good camping ground, he unlashed his rifle and
struck out westward across the river. In a moment he was
swallowed by the drift, bent on what seemed to me a hope
forlorn. Wetunik and I camped a mile onward within the
meagre shelter of some stumps of trees. The dogs fed their
lean ration, and our meal of beans and bacon and tea cooked
and eaten, we waited through the long hours of the night, to
the tune of the soughing wind among the trees and the com-
plaining whines of the hungry team.

Sometime in the monotony of it all we fell asleep. The
dogs, frantic with excitement, wakened us. The while we
rubbed our eyes came the crunching of Omarolluk’s steps. I
reached out for the stove — for that Omarolluk was cold and
hungry was all that entered my mind — when the door opened
and he crawled in. His face was wreathed in smiles.

“Took too,” said he, and advanced his three fingers before
our incredulous eyes. Whilst we plied him with beans and
sea-biscuit and scalding tea, he pantomimed his story with
all the details of the hunt. None of us had any thought of
sleep. As soon as the team could be harnessed he and
Wetunik struck out to bring in the kill. It was long after
daylight before they came back; and though one of the team
had been killed by his fellows at the feast, two happier and
more contented mortals than Wetunik and Omarolluk were
never seen. All through the day and night that followed
they gorged and slept, and gorged again.

WITH a spanking team before us, lunging and eager
to get on, we made miles in one day that had
taken two before. There were flocks of ptarmigan
here and there among the stunted willows along the banks.
At one lunch ground a whisky-jack hopped around us while
we dined, begging for all the bacon rinds and biscuit crumbs
we could spare.

Each new bend of the river led off to wider and longer
sweeps, and the ranges grew in grandeur at either hand.
At one point we came to the mouth of a large tributary
stream — an artery leading through what labryinths of rivers,
lakes, and streams into regions mysteriously far, even the
oldest of the present generation of Eskimos do not know.

As the sun gained in strength the snow became scintillat-
ing like the dust of powdered diamonds. It raised havoc
with our eyes, in spite of goggles. For two days Wetunik’s
eyes were altogether blind. All of one day he rode full length
on the sledge, shielding them with folded arms.

We had hardly settled into our stride for the journey one
bright blue morning, when Omarolluk halted the team and
pointed to a terrace of marine gravel plastered like a railway
grading, high up among the hills. “We are near the
sea,” said he. With every mile the river valley widened
and the hills became still more bold. Reaches of river
opened up, beyond which we could see the blue haze of far-

EXPLORATION OF NORTHERN UNGAVA 93

off shores. The days were glorious — blue skies and wads of
cotton for clouds, and what wind there was, warm and soft,
carried spring in its arms. On the tenth of April we came
face to face with a gigantic pile of rafted ice. “Tiahoke — -
the sea!” exclaimed the men. The ice, however, seemed im-
passable, but so were the beetling shores which hemmed us
in. For three days we climbed and tumbled and chopped
and wriggled our way through it. We fed the dogs on
frozen beans and sacrificed our grub boxes for fuel enough to
boil tea. As the tides buoyed it up and down, the groaning
and rifle-cracking of the ice upon which we slept resounded
the long nights through.

When morning came, we climbed the highest ice on the
lookout for a course beyond the welter of stuff that lay
ahead. What we saw was open water in the distance, and
floes packing with the wind. Up and over the shoreline,
which now, however, was not so steep, was the only way.
We climbed the hill in stages never more than two hundred
feet at a time. The dogs almost played out before we
reached the crest, but Omarolluk, going ahead some hundred
feet, would lie down on the flat of his back and with his
hands and legs moving erratically in the air, imitate the
flippers of a basking seal. As Nero would put it, “Dogs,
him come.”

Six hundred feet above the sea, a vast panorama lay out-
spread below us, the blue and white of Ungava Bay some
thirty miles away^ in the middle-ground the tangled skein of
the shorelines of Leaf Gulf. There were islands of strangely
familiar form, table- topped, grotesquely slanting, as if they
were about to topple into the sea. “Kokrak, tiamitow!”

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

(they are like the islands of the Great Whale coast) ex-
claimed Omarolluk; and so they were, the formations identi-
cal with the iron-bearing formations of the Nastapoka and
Belcher islands — the link I had hoped to find between Low’s
discoveries of the interior some hundred miles southward
and his later discoveries three hundred miles northward
on Ungava Bay.

We coasted down to sea, two miles of it, the team gallop-
ing in wild career, frantic lest our ponderous sledge overrun
their flying heels. Across the gulf we crawled, through deep
snow almost molten in the warm rays of the April sun. By
nightfall we reached the gulf’s east coast. Some hundred
miles now intervened between us and our journey’s end; but
the route thither was overland, for the coast of Ungava Bay,
owing to its enormous tides, is impassable. We knew that
there must be a sledge route to Fort Chimo. This Omarolluk
was most anxious to find; otherwise we might spend several
days in reconnaissance. We spent hours cross-sectioning
likely places where were old camp signs, often on hands and
knees brushing away a mantle of newly fallen snow. But
no sledge tracks could we discover.

When morning broke, soft and warm, we were up early
and breakfasting on bannock, tea, and beans, wondering the
while what the day’s work would bring, when we heard the
startling sound of voices — “Chimo — o! chimo — o!” Two
old women came toward us, waddling like penguins through
the snow. Thinking we were Eskimos from somewhere
northward along the Ungava coast, not until they were
close up did they realize their mistake. Astonishment held
them in their tracks. Exclaiming over and over their

EXPLORATION OF NORTHERN UNGAVA 95

wonder and surprise, haltingly they came into the camp.
Omarolluk gave them big mugs of tea and sea biscuit. Soon
we were like old friends. What palavering then went on!
“Yes,” they said in answer to the one question uppermost in
Omarolluk’s and Wetalltok’s minds, “the big tooktoo [deer]
hunt is on; even now they are migrating across the Kok-
soak, and yes, many of them, herds and herds — like the
boulders upon land.” When we struck out the men’s faces
beamed at the prospect which to them was the climax to our
journey.

It was up hill and down dale to Fort Chimo, over ribs of
bare rock hills, winding through boulder-strewn valleys, and
across small, solitary disks of lakes, or over chains of them
strung out like beads among the folds of hills. We breasted
a drifter the second day out, so thick we could hardly
make out the leader of the team. Wetunik, his leg lamed
the day before, followed limping behind the slow-moving
sledge. Near camp time we reached the crest of a long,
steep hill. The dogs broke into galloping; the sledge shot
after them down through the drift-filled air. When we
reached level ground, the sledge ahead and the yelping dogs
ploughing after, no Wetunik could we see. Crawling into
the lee of the sledge load we huddled for shelter and waited
for him to come on. Minutes dragged into hours. At in-
tervals Omarolluk fired the usual three rounds from his Win-
chester into the blanket of driving snow. It was useless to
double back on the trail, which now was blotted by the drift.
Darkness crowded through the storm; and, knowing that the
least of Wetunik’s portion was a meagre shelter behind some
boulder or an improvised cavern in the snow, gloomily we

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

made camp, crawled into our bags, and sank into sleep.
Daylight had hardly come when the crunch of footsteps
wakened us. Sheepishly Wetunik trudged into camp.
Chagrin underlay his smiling mask as he explained, between
gobbles of biscuit and gulps of tea, that he had spent the
night just beyond a hill not a mile away.

Our last day broke calm and warm and clear. By noon we
picked up some solitary trees. “Fort Chimo,” said Omarol-
luk as he eyed them, “is near.” Even the dogs seemed to
know what the end of this long-desired day would bring.
The long fan of their traces never sagged. We ran into
the fresh trail of some post team. Amid a din of howl-
ing, the dogs lunged ahead. We came to a break in the
level void of plain, and the great Koksoak came into view.
On its farthest shore stood out Fort Chimo — rows of
white cabins, from whose windows the evening sun re-
flected bolts of fire which shone like bloodspots on the
snow.

The factor, his apprentice, and I had hardly flnished break-
fasting the following morning, when the post interpreter
knocked on the door and announced that Omarolluk was
most anxious to see me. “He says, sir,” the interpreter be-
gan, when I had joined them, “that what he wants for you
to know is about them deer; how he only killed three; and
now, sir, he wants to give you an account of them other two
deer. First he knowed, sir he says, is when he stalked them
deer where they was yarded from the storm. On account
of the storm he gets close up on them and a-crawlin’ through
the snow, and then he aims at what is easy hittin’, sir; but
his bullets goes wide — the first up and over and the next

EXPLORATION OF NORTHERN UNGAVA 97

low, cuttin’ through the snow. ’Twas only luck, sir, what
made him get even three deer, and mighty glad he was he
got ’em, sir — for what happened was this: you handed
him the wrong cartridges, the t’irty-t’irty’s, which as you
knows, sir, is too loose for a Winchester t’ree-o-t’ree.”

Ill

The glamour of the post and the hospitality their ad-
miring friends heaped upon them were not to stand in
the way of the great hunt Omarolluk and Wetunik
had looked forward to so long. One day a score of Eskimos
came into the post, their sledges piled high with the carcasses
of deer from the big kill up on the Koksoak. That was
enough. Within the day they were off on the deer hunt of
their lives. During the fortnight they were gone I returned
with the post driver and team and explored the iron ore for-
mation find we had made on Leaf Gulf. My exploration,
handicapped by the rapidly melting ice and snow, was
without result. Further exploration, for a possible extension
of the iron ore formation northward of Leaf Gulf, had to be
left until open water.

Followed a long month of inaction waiting for the break-
up. The old weather prophets of the post said they had
never seen the winter last so long. For days the mile-wide
expanse of river ice, though rotten enough to keep us from
trips afield, showed no sign of breaking. To scan and specu-
late over its drab gray mass was the beginning and end of
every day. The days dragged on. We had almost given
up talking break-up, when an Eskimo, his shouts resounding,
came running to our door. Servants, Eskimos, and Indians
were gathering along the banks while a lookout from the
cross trees of the post’s flag mast pointed toward the river’s

NYLA

EXPLORATION OF NORTHERN UNGAVA 99

far bend downstream. With our glasses we made out a long
blue lane of open water, and pans of ice slowly twisting and
turning and sailing away. Then for two days a tumultuous
army floated by — miles and miles of ice, raftering and rear-
ing and overriding as it fought its way to sea.

On the heels of the ice came Indians in canoes from their
“land of little sticks” — swampy Crees from the far southwest
over toward Hudson Bay, and Nascopies from as far the
other way, the Atlantic slope of Labrador. Unlike the more
prosaic and more sophisticated Crees, the Nascopies were a
wild and primitive throng. Their whitish tan deerskin leg-
gings and capotes were set off in the geometric Nascopie
designs of vivid red and blue. Tall and lank and straight as
the straightest tree, they strode with swinging hips, their
heads held high — finely chiselled masks almost buried in
their shoulder-long hair. The Crees, whom through the
interpreter I approached for information as to a route by
canoe for my return to Hudson Bay, said that even now
there was bad going upstream — an ice jam two days away
and behind it miles of floating ice.

To make a long story short, I abandoned my long-laid
plan of returning with Omarolluk and Wetunik by canoe to
the Great Whale coast; for the short summer would be half
over before I reached it, and there would be no time left to
attempt another crossing to Wetalltok’s islands. Reluc-
tantly enough we made our separate plans: Omarolluk and
Wetunik to return to their anxious wives at Great Whale,
and myself with Fort Chimo Eskimos to strike off northward
through new country. The post people, the servants, the
Crees, the Nascopies, and the Eskimos crowded about the

lOO

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

landing to see Omarolluk and Wetunik go — Wetunik with
his beloved bob-tailed dog (one of the staunchest of our team)
crouched in the bow, then Omarolluk with a young boy of
eight years before him, whom he explained to me he had
adopted since his wife gave him none but girls, settled in the
stern. As admiring friends began calling out farewell, they
dug down into their pockets and fetched forth what seemed
to be two balls of red cotton rags. Impressively they un-
wound them; and when some yard or more of cotton had been
reeled off, what lay in their hands were two trade watches
which I had given them as presents the day before. “Ah!”
said everyone. Of course they could not tell the time, but
carefully they compared them to see that they agreed; then
more carefully still wrapped their treasures up, waved to us
with their paddles, and shoved off.

Eskimo hunters coming up river by kayak reported the
coast ice-free — an ice condition in Ungava Bay as early as
the Koksoak was late. This turn of fortune opened up a
new and more interesting plan, a traverse of the peninsula
northward of the one I had just completed from Ungava Bay
to Hudson Bay. This traverse would open up a representa-
tive section of the unexplored area remaining.

Overnight I decided upon the attempt. The little post of
Fort Chimo hummed (if a fur post ever can hum) with active
preparations. The factors of both posts, Hudson’s Bay and
Revillon’s, vied with one another to help with the outfitting.
The Hudson’s Bay people gave me one Nuckey, their best
man, and Nawri, and young Ahegeek, son of old Ahe-
geek, who was chief of his tribe, and Ambrose, son of the Dog
Woman. From trade canvas secured from Revillon’s a

EXPLORATION OF NORTHERN UNGAVA loi

native seamstress fashioned a fly-proof tent, sewing every
seam of it with the sinew of a deer. My food supply
^ — beans, bacon, dried fruit, jerked deer meat, sugar, tobacco,
and tea — was estimated to be sufficient to last the five of us
two months. The canoe was a huge Peterboro, twenty-five
feet long, capable of a load of forty-five hundred pounds —
one that the Revillon factor had imported some years before
for a party of Nascopie packeteers for use in the big rapids of
the Koksoak. The Indians, however, refused to use it. A
“man-killer,” they called it, too heavy for the portages; so
for years it had lain idle in the loft of the fur post. It was
just the kind of craft we needed, however; big enough to
weather the seas along the hundreds of miles of sea coast we
must travel.

Curious Crees and long-haired Nascopies; fur-clad Es-
kimos and post half-breeds in capotes and scarlet sashes;
servants, wives, babes, and children, stood at the edge of the
banks. Farewells were soon over. The Indians shook with
laughter when Nuckey and his three men, bearing the “man-
killer” on their shoulders, passed them by. We climbed
aboard the Walrus^ a diminutive sloop of open hold and
twenty-nine feet of keel. She was already loaded rails down
— four Eskimo hunters, their wives and children and dogs,
and a yelping litter of pups. Within two hours we were
standing out on the glass calm of Ungava Bay. Through
the gray twilight of the night we drifted aimlessly with
the tide, all but the helmsman, Nuckey, the nest of puppies,
and myself stretched out asleep on deck or in the hold.

For two days we sailed slowly along before light catspaws
of wind, the hunters scooting like water bugs in their kayaks

102

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

ahead of us, on the alert for seal. The coast was low, deso-
late— long fangs of points reaching for miles out to sea;
flocks of bare rock islands, and over them gigantic blocks of
sea ice, gleaming white and green, lying stranded by the
enormous fall of tide. When the tide flooded in (a rise of
forty feet) the islands were erased from view and the blocks
of ice floated willy-nilly on the sea. On the third day low
clouds came scudding out of the east, where an ice blink
loomed in the sky. “Seeco — the ice,” said Nuckey,
and we altered our course toward land. Great white lumps
of bergs, resplendent in the ethereal light of the low-hanging
sun, came sailing in majestically with the ice pack from sea.
Before the day was over we were prisoners on a small, high
rock of island. The ice raftered in a gigantic ring around
us. For three days gales of wind blew out of the east,
until it seemed that the ice from all the North Atlantic, the
boom and slosh and rasp of it resounding, was crowding in.

When the gale died down, the sea was a solid mass of ice;
but soon the ebb and flow of tide opened lanes that wound
like ribbons through it. Through them we made our way,
the kayaks signalling where to follow. Often a day’s jour-
neying, winding as we did, covered but a few miles as the
crow flies. Often we were caught on some bleak little island
and held prisoners there for days on end.

Finally we reached the wide, open arms of Payne Bay. At
the head of it, where the Payne debouches over a multitude
of boulder channels to the sea, the Walrus reached her jour-
ney’s end. Here all hands debarked, and camp was made on
shore amid a confusion of sea-drenched garments outspread
on boulders to dry. Within two days the women’s work of

EXPLORATION OF NORTHERN UNGAVA 103

mending boots and garments, and our work of repairing out-
fit and going over food, were done, and the “man-killer”
stood loaded and waiting offshore. Then came the last
farewells among the good friends around. They climbed to
the hills and watched us until we were buried in the winding
of the unknown stream.

A splendid river is the Payne, larger than the Gatineau of
the Ottawa River system in Lower Canada.^ Enchanting
pictures were the great terrace-strung slopes at either hand,
towering hundreds of feet above us. Here and there were
white streaks and bridal veils of torrents cascading down.
The narrow level plains along the river’s edge were carpeted
with tan and russet mosses, and flowers purple, white, and
yellow — solid banks of colour, with bees and butterflies
among them. Haunting it was and mysteriously beautiful
in the ethereal light of those low northern suns.

There never was a more happy or carefree crew than we
five. Banter, smiles, and laughter were our stock in trade.
Day and night to us were almost the same, and there was no
watch to space them. We ate and slept when we willed.

One day as we sailed along with a light draft of wind be-
hind us Nawri, in an astonished voice, suddenly called:
“Innuet! Innuet!” For the moment I could hardly be-
lieve my eyes, for an Eskimo in this place, of all places, was
the last thing I dreamed of seeing. Where Nawri pointed I
made out a kayak quickly scooting out from shore to an is-
land rock. As we drew nearer we saw the kayaker peering

^The Payne was named by Low when he explored its mouth during his exploration of the
west coast of Ungava Bay in 1898. (See A. P. Low: Report on an Exploration of Part of
the South Shore of Hudson Strait and of Ungava Bay, Report L of Annual Kept. Geol.
Survey of Canada, vol. XI for 1898, Ottawa, 1901.)

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

104

at us from behind a screen of boulders on the island’s crest.
At shouting range Nawri called “Chimo.” He stood up
then and in a queer tremulous voice answered. It was plain
he did not know what to make of us; but soon, reassured, he
paddled alongside and became quite happy when the men
explained our presence. As we neared his encampment he
called out to his huddled family, jokingly, something about
the Adelite (Indian) coming. For even to this day is the
Indian dreaded. This native, whose name was Gwack, to-
gether with his family, a grown-up son, two wives, a grand-
mother, some half-dozen small children, an army of dogs,
and a tame sea gull tied by a thong, was living on the Arctic
salmon resources of the river near by. A plentiful supply,
cleaned and split, was spread about on the ground curing
in the sun.

The one dependable source of food supply for the natives
who travel the interior in summer is fish, particularly the
namaycushy the great lake trout, and a finer-eating fish does
not exist. We caught them up to four feet in length with
cod hooks, baited with pork and red flannel, so easily that
we had no occasion to use our nets during the entire journey.

Nawri mentioned that Gwack was a Great Whale River
Eskimo and that he had through the preceding months of
winter hunted his way to the Payne with dogs and sledge
through the waterways of the interior. From Great Whale
River to this point seemed to me a hazardous journey, as he
would have to take circuitous courses and fish through the
ice for food. Far journeys have been made by criminal
Eskimos, fleeing from the vengeance of their fellows, and
Gwack’s presence here, a hundred miles beyond the habita-

EXPLORATION OF NORTHERN UNGAVA 105

tion of his people, seemed strongly indicative of something
irregular. Nor did he look at all incapable of it. He was
bald to the ears — the only bald native I have ever seen—
which, combined with his sinister, weather-scarred mask,
made him not a prepossessing object.

Ten days on from Gwack’s encampment, ice lay stranded
along either shore — a sure sign that there was ice still re-
maining in the big lakes of the interior. We came to where
the river divided. The southern fork, the larger, is the out-
let of the great lake, Teeseriuk. Said Nawri: “If there is
ice in the lakes before us, in the great Teeseriuk we shall be
sure to find more of it — enough, perhaps, to block our way;
whereas [tracing a map of both forks in the sand before him]
if we ascend the northern fork we shall probably find the
lakes both small and shoal, and consequently find less ice.”
I was keenly disappointed not to descend the lower fork, for
Teeseriuk, if what the Eskimos who have one time hunted
there say is true, is a vast body of water, the largest in all
Ungava — “four days’ fast kayaking,” said Nawri, “before
one sees the western end. The waves when the wind blows
hard are big, almost like the sea, and too, in winter the ice
rafts and fissures like the tiahoke seeco [sea ice.]” That
Teeseriuk is probably one of the great lakes of northeastern
Canada I have no doubt.

Ice or no ice, what we did encounter in the ascent of the
north fork could hardly have been more difficult. The
stream, narrowing to nothing more than a V-shaped trough,
was for miles on end a white race of water. Our tracking
ground was a treacherous surface of ten-foot banks of ice
that had been stranded alongshore by the fall of the river

io6

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

following the break-up some few weeks before. Three
tracked the “man-killer” while Nawri, standing in the stern,
worked her nose around the shoals and boulders and blocks
of stranded ice. There was one rapid draw so swift that
Nawri and I had to bend with the men to the tracking-line,
whilst the “man-killer,” awash to her gunwales, came on by
inches.

For three days we toiled. We had begun to believe that
the white water would never end. Came the swiftest
stretch of all. We were almost over it, when our stout seal-
skin tracking-line, catching against a sharp-edged boulder,
snapped in two. The “man-killer,” with our all in all in-
side her, swung broadside on and went off galloping down-
stream. Pell-mell we raced along the ice banks. Coming
to where the river doubled around a point, Nawri jumped in
to his waist, and balancing himself with his paddle, barely
caught the dangling end of the tracking-line as the “man-
killer” swept by.

Larger and larger were the banks of winter snow. They
enhanced the melancholy of the boulder-strewn hills and
plains. Finally we came into a region where the river be-
came nothing but short links to multitudes of lakes and
lonely, God-forsaken ponds, so shoal that one could almost
wade across them. The colourless, long-sloped country
around them matched their tone of leaden gray. Often we
launched out from some toilsome portage upon what we felt
sure was a paddle of at least an hour’s length, only to find
ourselves out on shore again within a mile. On the seven-
teenth of July we reached the point where our one-time for-
midable stream was nothing but a frothing creek. Said

EXPLORATION OF NORTHERN UNGAVA 107

Nawri: “We are near the height of land. My father used
to say that the Eskimos from the western sea [Hudson Bay]
came in here where these rivers begin; so the river they as-
cended cannot be far away.”

We decided in the morning to go off in different directions,
each of us on the lookout for the beginning of a river that
would lead us down to Hudson Bay.

While we were pitching camp, thick lowering banks of
cloud, that all day long had been slowly gathering in the sky
and hanging low over the gloom of valleys and far-off hills,
began twisting in the rising wind. Loons, far and near,
called out wildly as they flew like rockets through the air.
The wind grew stronger. It scattered our precious supper
fire to the four points of the compass; and then, like regi-
ments, came walls of rain. We crawled supperless into
camp. There was no let-up through the night. When we
wakened in the morning, thick wet snow was flying through
the air. For the next two days we were prisoners within the
cramped, flapping shelter of the tent. Cold water and sea
biscuit was our food, for the moss, sole source of fuel, was
sodden through. The moss-carpeted ground under us was
like a sponge, and there was no heat to dry wet clothes and
blankets; but as ever the crew were full of jokes and banter.

On the third day the storm was gone, and a soft yellow
sun from low down in the north enwrapped the snow-swept
hills and plain. By overturning large boulders we secured
great armfuls of moss. In the open end, over a fireplace
of cobblestones, we took turns at blowing the flame which
must be constantly fed, since the moss burned almost as
rapidly as paper. The smoke, pungent as that of burn-

io8

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

ing rags, filled our dripping eyes; but, though the moss
smoke had strongly flavoured them, we had warmed our
beans and boiled our beloved tea.

All through the next day we scouted through wet, ankle-
deep snow for signs of a route. At nightfall, as Nuckey and
I were tramping back toward camp, we fell in with Nawri,
who was carrying the weathered blade of an old kayak paddle.
He knew by the shape of it, he said, that it was the fragment
of a paddle used by the Eskimos from Hudson Bay. He
came to their old camp signs too, he continued, by the
bank of a westward-flowing stream. If we portaged down,
he was sure we would come to the little lake-beginning of
the route we desired so much to find. For two days we
portaged on, over soft, yielding mossy ground where our
steps weighed like lead, and over acres of big, close-packed
boulders. We made two trips on every portage — one with
the outfit (the loads ranged from 150 to Nawri’s 250 pounds)
and one with the well-named “man-killer,” which came
belly-up on the aching shoulders of the crew. The third
day, launched on a man-sized stream, we were whipping our
paddles toward the western sea. The boulder-strewn deso-
lation of the height of land gave way to higher and higher
hills. The tawn and russet mosses of the spoons of valleys
that lay between shone like velvet in the soft yellow of the
sun. Everywhere were old camp signs of deer-hunting
Eskimos of generations gone by. We saw old deer trails,
worn in the solid bed-rock, where countless thousands must
have passed, and near them boulder blinds where the hunters
had lain in wait for them; and at one point, as we swung into
a new bend of stream, I saw what seemed to be a herd of

EXPLORATION OF NORTHERN UNGAVA 109

grazing deer. They were merely decoys — two big boulders,
the small one atop the large, spread out on the distant plain.

Lakes innumerable, large and small, linked our ever-
growing stream. On the larger lakes, choked as they were
with islands, the outlets took hours of paddling and climbing
into the hills to find. One day we swept, tumbling over a
mile-long canyon, into the arms of another and im-
pressively larger stream. There were fewer but larger lakes
from now on — one lake so long that its far horizon was a
faint blue line. It was still half-filled with the winter’s
ice, but we could always pick out some blue lane to follow
through. There was now no longer the melancholy gloom
of lowering skies. The purple, white, and yellow banks of
flowers, the gray knobs of hills, the russet sweeps of plain,
and the green emerald of the great river, were vibrant in the
air. Fish — great, red-fleshed trout, sometimes more than
four feet long — we caught whenever we wanted them.
Winds from the east followed unfailingly, and where the
glorious river ran white we could usually jump the “man-
killer” through, two or three miles of it sometimes, the wind
cutting our faces, the white-and-black bottom of sand and
boulders a blur as we sped by.

By the receded sea beaches along the river banks and the
appearance of clumps of stunted willows, we knew when we
were nearing Hudson Bay. The higher hills we often
climbed for a view of it, but gleaming loops of river were all
that we could see. The first day of August at noon we left
the wallowing seas of a big lake expansion and slipped into
the shelter of its outlet, the river. Within a mile the river
broke into heavy rapids. Once over the draw, like a shot

I lO

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

the “man-killer” was drawn down. Came shouts and yells
from the bowsman. The crew joined in. Were we trapped,
about to ride to eternity over the brink of some giant fall?
More wildly they yelled; they paddled like madmen. Swim-
ming down the rapid was a half-grown goose. What a race
between that God-forsaken gosling and the frenzied crew!
The “man-killer,” swinging broadside-on, came within an
ace of filling. By the time we had swung her round we had
shot from the rapid’s tail into a still, clear pool. We were
laughing still over the goose chase, when Nawri pointed to
some sea-weed near shore. We glided slowly around a
point. Before us lay the sea. We tasted the water to make
sure.

We struck north along the coast. Before the hour was
out we saw the last of the great Povungnituk, one of the
greatest rivers in all Labrador.* Within ten miles we found
what we had hoped for — the topeks of some Eskimos.
Scurrying figures, obviously apprising their occupants of our
arrival, were sharply silhouetted against the sky. They
disappeared as we drew near. Only the dogs crawled about,
or lay asleep on the ground. Inquiringly I turned to Nawri.
“Innuet immaitame,” he replied (the custom of the people).
“Innuet ho ho!” he called out, as the “man-killer” grounded
on the beach. Embarrassingly long was the interval that
followed before a tent flap flew open and an old Eskimo, rub-
bing his eyes, came slowly out. Every tent door opened
then, and men, women, babes, and children were soon crowd-
ing around us. We pitched camp amongst them, and gave

nts volume is nearly equal to the Ottawa, the largest tributary of the St. Lawrence
(See Report on Exploration of East Coast of Hudson Bay, A. P. Low, Volume XIII, for
J900, Ottawa, 1902.)

EXPLORATION OF NORTHERN UNGAVA in

them tobaccomik and tea. They shared with us berries,
salmon freshly killed and the eggs of eiders. On the floor of
the largest topek I spread out my map of the coast of Hudson
Bay and they traced with their fingers and told us where we
might find driftwood and where there might be camps of
Eskimos. What pleased us most of all was their assurance
that there was no more ice — everywhere the coast was clear.

Northward along the desolate boulder-strewn waste of
low-lying country; across the mouths of narrow, deep,
winding bays; and in amongst small rocks of islands, we
made our way. When we pitched camp at nightfall we
found, as the friendly Eskimos had said, enough driftwood
for fire — the first real warm fire since far-off Ungava Bay.
We hovered round it half through the night. Morning
came, calm, clear, and so warm that we had no mind for
paddling. The seals kept bobbing up around us, and there
were schools of white whales playing near the shoals offshore,
and school after school of steel and silver salmon scurrying
from under our canoe. The crew were like a crowd of boys,
bubbling with excitement, exclaiming their “ayee’s” as
these golden treasures passed by. All day long we half
paddled, half drifted, on the overwhelming blue of the sea
around us — blue and still as the sky. The paralleling thread
of coastline fell away. The nearest coast now lay ahead
some four miles to northward. Night came on. We
headed toward the distant shore. We took our time, for
there was driftwood aboard with which to build another
great fire. Our beds would be on the moss beside it. We
paddled on, unconcerned. But as the night deepened
a wind rose. It cut our faces. We strained through the

II2

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

gloom toward the shadow which was land. The wind
blew harder. We dug in, Nawri’s “kiyee! kiyee!” stroking
us. Big seas broke hard over the “man-killer’s” nose. We
were fighting for inches, when above the piping of the wind,
the smash of water and the din of paddles thumping on the
gunwales, we heard the wash of surf. Soon we made the lee
of land.

Though the wind still was strong, by morning it
blew offshore. We sailed on. By nightfall the
colossal form of Cape Smith, wrapped in haze, lay
prostrate across the thin line of coast. On its crest, one
thousand eight hundred feet half-sheer from sea, died the
last yellow shaft of sun. We were camped on a moss sward
of shore, gathered around a great roaring driftwood
fire, when from out of the darkness came three Eskimos.
They stood frozen in their tracks when they saw myself —
the kablunak — and around me strange Eskimos. But in a
few moments Nawri had us all to rights, and with a steaming
kettle of tea before us we were grouped happily around the
fire.

“Yes,” their spokesman said, “the sea ice, only two sleeps
ago, an east wind swept to sea; so all of the way to the big
land to the north [that is. Cape Wolstenholme] the coast is
clear.” With Nawri they went over my map and showed
me where there might be camp grounds of other Eskimos; but
driftwood, said they, we would not be likely from now on to
find. Never did Eskimo so quickly gulp down the few
scraps of food we had to spare, and the tobaccomik and tea
we gave them they held close with trembling hands, when
finally they bade us “chimo” and strode off through the
gloom.

Again the sky was cold and lowering. The wind following

113

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

114

blew strong. The “man-killer” had all she could do to
mount the seas. We reefed the leg-o’-mutton. A bawling
wake wound out astern. The leg-o’-mutton, swaying gro-
tesquely, frightened flocks of gulls that, flapping from the
nearby reefs, wheeled over us in the air. By noon the coast
hung out over us — gigantic tapestries mottled green, russet,
and terra cotta, veined and interveined with milk-and-yellow
quartz, one thousand feet to where they met the gray sky.
The strata upon strata of white dots which stood out against
them were gulls. The green seas were clotted here and
there with sea pigeons, and eiders in black swarms like flies
circled us. Among the rocks of one talus slope lay a splotch
of white — a dead Arctic fox, so Nawri said, fallen from the
cliff whilst poaching.

Mile upon mile the speck of us sailed. Wilder were the
seas. Puffs and squalls swooped straight down. The
threshing Icg-o’-mutton shook the “man-killer” as a terrier
shakes a bone. Came a break in the clouds in the angry
west, and the sun as it was sinking broke out. Like a
searchlight it raked through the gloom. But nowhere was
there a landing; no niche, no talus slope, nor even a projecting
ledge big enough to land the “man-killer” on. The dirge
of the sea throbbing through the cliffs; the wild, weird call-
ing of the sea fowl; and the roaring of the wind — we had all
but given up hope, when Nawri in the bow shot up and with
his paddle pointed ahead. The helmsmen — it took two of
them to hold her — swung the “man-killer’s” nose. She
waddled for a moment, until the leg-o’-mutton filled and she
shot into the wide-open arms of a tiny cove and rammed her
nose full speed upon shore.

■ J"

V •

THE WALRUS HUNTER

'i I'

I':, I
!

I I'

[ i
I I

EXPLORATION OF NORTHERN UNGAVA 115

“We cannot take the omiak farther,” said Nawri. A slot
of a valley rose in half-sheer steps, winding up to the snow-
clad tableland fifteen hundred feet above. The “man-
killer,” the leg-o’-mutton, all but the clothes we wore, and
the last few scraps of food, we reluctantly abandoned to
climb the valley, thence over the tablelands to pick our way
to what on my map was Eric Cove.

The night was light enough, for all through it welts of red
and yellow from the not far-sunken sun stood out in the
north. Up half sheer faces of cliffs, on hands and knees
scrambling over the talus, and knee-deep through banks of
sodden snow we climbed to the tablelands; then on, half bent
into the wind, over plains of snow that never disappear, we
tramped through darkness. It was midnight when Nawri
halted us abruptly. Before us stood a void and down into
it wound a tongue of snow, its far end lost in gloom. Down
through the snow and on to where it gave way to a wild,
roaring stream, on till the cliffs were crowding high, tortu-
ously we picked our way. Finally the ravine widened,
the stream smoothed out to long, silent reaches, and before
us a single square of yellow light shone through the darkness.
“Kablunak!” exclaimed the men.

A more desolate post than Wolstenholme I have never
seen. Three sheds of houses stand on a narrow strand be-
tween gigantic flanks of bare, ice-scoured hills. Wind,
roaring down the flume of valley, blasts them with sand and
gravel. At either hand down into the low-lying coast of
Hudson Bay, or eastward along the bold, sheer headlands of
Hudson Strait, the next two posts of the solitary fur men
are hundreds of miles away. But my host, the factor, though

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

1 16

his companions were none save Eskimos and his scanty
rations came out of not too various cans, was contented
enough. Said he, “Indeed, I enjoys it, sir,”

I had expected that by the time of my arrival the fur
ship from England would long since have passed into Hud-
son Bay. Upon her, outward bound, I planned to take
passage to Lower Canada. But no ship had come, none
but a whaler ship had been seen from the headlands, working
through the ice. The days dragged on. The first week of
August came and was gone. No ship had ever been so late.
We began to think she never would come; and the prospect
of a second winter in the country, at God-forsaken Wol-
stenholme, was staring me in the face when, on the bright
morning of the eighth of August, came the welcome cry:
“Omiak! Omiak!”

The “man-killer’s” crew followed me down over the sand.
We shook hands. They inquired if ever they would see me
again — if they did, I should have no journey too long for
them to make.

PART IV

FILMS

ON MY third expedition into the north, in 1913, when
we set out from Newfoundland in the Laddie^ I
included in my equipment all the necessary appara-
tus for making a motion picture film of the Eskimos.

As the reader will remember, from St. John’s, Newfound-
land, we sailed north along the coast of Labrador to the
mouth of Hudson Strait. Owing to the heavy winds which
prevailed in the Strait and the lateness of the season we had
to abandon our original idea of wintering in Hudson Bay.
So we put into the rugged snow-capped coast of Baffin Land.

We cruised over mysterious bays and among tide-washed
rocks and craggy islands. The tide, what with its rise and
fall of over thirty feet, submerged, as it rose, and laid bare
as it fell, numberless reefs. In the first good harbour we
anchored ship. On the lookout for Eskimos, with the launch
we chugged on through still more groups of islands. The
day was almost gone when, clearing the island mask, we
came upon big half-sheer cliffs of mainland. We had just
about given up hope of seeing Eskimos, when the bowsman
pointed toward shore. We made out three topeks.

We called the usual “Chimo! chimo!” A towsly head
appeared, and an old woman came out haltingly, holding a
naked babe in her arms. We knew then that there were

I 20

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

only women in the camp. Their men, said they, were in-
land, deer-hunting among the hills. Trade candy, of
colours dazzling to the eye, and black plug tobacco went far
to break down their reserve. Whilst we lunched on sea
biscuit and tea, waiting for the hunters to return, one comely
girl — whaler-trained I could see from the spoons, an alarm-
clock bell, and big Canadian pennies that dangled on the
heel-long tail of her kooletah — brought forth an old accor-
dion, which, bearing the hand-painted label, “Forget-me-
not,” was evidently the gift of some affectionate whaler lad.
She began diffidently enough at first to play. It was not
long, however, before she was tearing off “The Campbells
are Coming,” hornpipes, and the devil’s reel, and Gushue,
the mate, in his Newfoundland knee-boots of cowhide, was
“a-shakin’ ’em down” on a granite ledge. In the midst of
it the hunters returned. Their eyes sparkled at the prospect
of a ship, with its treasure-trove of tobacco, sweets, guns,
and tea, come amongst them.

“Yes,” said their spokesman, the oldest, “where you are
now is the mouth of Amadjuak Bay. At the head of the
bay two small rivers flow into the sea, and even now there
are Eskimos there, and the camps of half-a-hundred more” —
he counted with the fingers of his hand— “are less than a
day’s kayaking away.” They smiled from ear to ear when
we told them of the big igloo aboard the ship, which we were
to put together and live in for a year.

They were in their kayaks waiting at noon the following
day when the Laddie^ her flags flying, pulled out from the
island mask toward them. All of them — their women,
babies, and children, their dogs and tents and gear — were

FILMS

I2I

soon aboard. The cook plied them with sea biscuit, lard,
and tea, and the gramophone above the rattle and clangour
of the engine and the tumult of their and their dogs’ voices,
poured out minstrel and Harry Lauder songs as the Laddie^
with as closely packed and happy a throng as any Coney
Island boat ever carried, sailed toward the head of Amadjuak
Bay.

On the northwest corner of the half-round, rugged head
of Amadjuak Bay, we located, for here was not only har-
bourage, but a small river tumbling with much fuss and
pother over a half-mile rapid to sea— fresh water for our
film-developing the winter through. “There are Hearne
salmon here,” said one old Eskimo, “when spawning time
begins in spring; and up beyond the rapids lies a little chain
of lakes which leads to the great deer country in the interior.”

With a will the Eskimos helped us unload. For three days
an endless chain of them plied the ship’s dories, and their
own kayaks catamaraned between ship and shore; while the
women, old men, and children lugged and rolled and shoul-
dered the burdens up over the slopes of rock.

Within a week the Laddie s work was done, and out over
the harbour’s face she sailed for Newfoundland.

There was skin ice over the harbour on several snapping
clear days before September closed; then open water again
through the bluff and bluster of October, which month ended
with such a drifter that our launch, anchored bow and stern
just offshore, sank to the bottom under the weight and drive
of snow. By mid-November winter had settled down, and
the hut, snow-walled, was made snug and warm. I chose the
families who were to live the winter through in their igloos

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MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

around us — one Yew, of long experience with whalers; one
Noahasweetow; his son Annunglung; one “Jack Johnson”;
three half-grown boys, four wives, one old grandmother,
and a flock of children.

Until February we made no film, for there were long
sledge trips to make east and west along the coast. During
the memorable days when we were in the hut there was much
to do. The evenings through there were always guests
from the igloos around, come to smoke a pipe, to gossip
about their hunting, to listen to “the little box that makes
the fine noise”; but most of all to watch our games of bil-
liards which we played on a diminutive quarter-size table,
under the yellow light of smoky lamps and rows of flickering
candles, ejaculating their “ayee’s” and “ah’s” and holding
their breath while some cue ball slowly rolled its fateful
course.

To our Christmas feast Eskimos sledged in from camps
two days away — from Fair Ness, from the Isle of God’s
Mercy, Chorkback, and Markham Bay. While outfitting
in Newfoundland, two of the men had been deputed to make
up a feast and pack it in a special box marked “Christmas,”
keeping the contents a secret. Much too slowly December
dragged on, and we decreed that the twenty-fifth of Decem-
ber was a mere figure of speech. We elected the fifteenth as
the gladsome day.

The billiard table, covered with canvas, was our festive
board. The Eskimos dined on less delectable but bulkier
fare in the overcrowded kitchen just beyond. Noahaswee-
tow’s and Annunglung’s wives, uniformed in two old pairs
of pajamas over their clothes of deerskin, served the table.

FILMS

12-3

“Jack Johnson” manned the phonograph the while. It
was midnight when they all filed out, varicoloured paper hats
from Tom Thumb crackers cocked on their happy heads.

February came, cold but glowingly clear and calm. Then
we began our films. We did not want for cooperation.
The women vied with one another to be starred. Igloo
building, conjuring dances, sledging, and seal-hunting were
run off as the sunlit days of February and March wore on.
Of course there was occasional bickering, but only among
the women — ^jealousy, usually, of what they thought was the
over-prominence of some rival in the film. One young
mother, whom, with her baby, I was in the midst of filming
one clear day, suddenly got up, and despite my threats and
pleas, walked away. Neither she nor her husband had been
up to snuff of late, so I decided to send them away. “ Don’t
care,” said she, when in the most impressive way we an-
nounced her fate, “seals are the best food anyway.” But
old Yew, ever father of his flock, interposed, and what was
finally picked out from the crazy-quilt of his pidgin English
was that she was not altogether wrong. Two times in as
many days I had given Luliakame’s (her rival’s) baby candy,
but I “no see him hers.”

With April came longer and warmer days; some days so
warm that even on the sledges we fell asleep, while the dogs
wandered where and how they willed. By the end of May
sledge expeditions far afield — along the coast up into the
mouth of Fox Channel in the west, distant some 170 miles;
and east 1 50 miles to Lake Harbour — had been accomplished.
June came in with daylight the twenty-four hours long.
Hunters came sledging in from the interior, bringing tales of

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MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

deer evierywhere. No a has wee tow and Annunglung, know-
ing that I was planning a deer-hunting film, came in one
day from a two-sleeps’ journey northward, bringing lashed
on their sledge a live year-old deer, which, they explained,
they had slightly wounded and captured by running down.
Their gift proved embarrassing, for what with so many dogs
at large, we had to keep it for three disturbing nights in a
place of security, which was none other than our kitchen.

On the tenth of June I prepared for our long-planned deer-
filming expedition, and on the following day, with camera
and retorts of film and food for twenty days, Annunglung
and I left for the deer grounds of the interior. Through
those long June days we travelled far. The thick yellow
sun, hanging low in the northern sky for all the hours save
the two at midnight, seemed to roll along the blue masses of
the far-off hills. Deer were everywhere, pawing up the
mosses deep in the valleys, or in long bands winding funere-
ally across the white surfaces of little lakes and ponds. In
three days we had climbed to the summit, a wind-swept
boulder plain, of the height of land — the divide of the waters
flowing south into Hudson Strait, and north through un-
known Lake Amadjuak. Behind us lay the welter of
wrinkled hills through which we had come; before us a void
of plain.

We were picking out a course when Annunglung pointed
to what seemed to be so many boulders in a valley far below.
The boulders moved. “Tooktoo!” Annunglung whis-
pered. We mounted camera and tripod on the sledge.
Dragging his six-fathom whip ready to cow the dogs before
they gave tongue, Annunglung went on before the team.

FILMS

125

We swung in behind the shoulder of an intervening hill.
When we rounded it we were almost among them. The team
lunged. The deer, all but three, galloped to right and left
up the slope. Three kept to the valley. On we sped, the
camera rocking like the mast of a ship at sea. From the
galloping dogs to the deer not two hundred feet beyond,
I filmed and filmed and filmed. Yard by yard we began
closing in. The dogs, sure of victory, gave tongue. Then
something happened. I am not altogether clear as to how it
happened. All that I know is that I fell headlong into a
deep drift of snow. The sledge was belly-up, and across the
traces of the bitterly disappointed team Annunglung was
doubled up with laughter.

Within two days we swung back for camp, jubilant over
what I was sure was the film of films. But within twelve
miles of the journey’s end, crossing the rotten ice of a stream,
the sledge broke through. Exit film.

On the twenty-third of August we saw the last of good old
Yew, Annunglung, Noahasweetow, “Jack Johnson,” and
their wives and babies and children, and the hills of Baffin
Land sank slowly into the sea.

OF OUR adventures after leaving Baffin Land, among
the Belcher Islands and down the coasts of Hudson
and James bays, I have already told. I left the
Laddie to be berthed for the winter at Moose Factory, and
the film, along with the specimens, maps, and notes, went
with me by canoe up the Moose and the Mattagami to the
“line.” The film, during my winter in lower Canada, was
edited and put in form. It was too crude to be interesting.
But I was to go north again in the spring — this time to ex-
plore and winter on the Belcher Islands. I determined to
attempt a better one.

Through the winter on the Belchers there was much in the
way of exploration to be done, but from late February on,
whenever there were good days, I worked at remaking and
building up the film I had begun in Baffin Land. In the long
evenings around the hut’s crackling stove my Eskimos and
I talked and speculated as to what scenes could be made.
Said Wetalltok one night : “Why not, when the ice breaks in
spring, make the aggie [picture] of the big iviuk [walrus]?
There are small sea-swept islands some three sleeps north of
here where the iviuk live. I know, for I have killed them
there. Twenty I killed and flensed during one short day.”

“The walrus is bad when he is angry,” Wetalltok con-
tinued. “That same summer one Eskimo went out from
shore with his kayak to hunt ducks. Though early in the

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FILMS

127

morning there had been a walrus kill, there were no signs of
walrus then. He did not come back. All that the people
could find were pieces of kayak. The water was red, red,
red.

“And you have heard of that kablunak [a member of the
Northwest Mounted Police at Cape Fullerton]. Their
whaleboat was strong and big, but the walrus they had
wounded with their gun but did not kill swam under the boat
and up over the side. With his tusks he turned it over.
Two of the kablunak swam in to shore, which was near, but
the other one was frightened. He swam out. The two
kablunak who got out on shore saw the walrus charge the
kablunak who was swimming. The walrus kept on charging
him, even after he was dead. Then he went for the boat
and smashed it to pieces with his tusks. And then he charged
the pieces which floated on the sea.

“To come upon the walrus sleeping upon the shore will be
the surest way to make the aggie. I will crawl in among
them and throw my harpoon. Quick they will all roll into
the sea. Then will come the fight. It will take all of us to
hold him with the line of my harpoon. You will see his
mates close around him. They will all be very, very angry.”
Such was the beginning of the iviuk aggie.

When June came we were ready and waiting to begin the
trip. Salty Bill had long since had the Nastapoka rigged and
painted and waiting to slide into the sea the moment the ice
cleared away.

On the seventeenth the break-up came, and within the
day the Nastapoka was launched, loaded, and under way.
On the last of June we cleared from the last north of the Bel-

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MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

cher Islands. At sundown we picked up a bit of land, a
boulder-covered waste not much more than a ship’s length
long. The reader will remember how, attracted by the
swarms of sea pigeons that as thick as flies flew up over the
island, we ventured too near, and before we knew what had
happened, the Nastapoka^ sagging in a big ground-swell,
struck and began pounding to pieces on the rocks. He will
remember, too, the three long weeks we spent there, and
how, with nothing but a few pieces of driftwood. Salty Bill
made a Spanish winch and worked thtNastapoka in to shore;
and how, with bits of board and canvas, though she had
holes in her through which one could crawl. Salty finally
fixed her up again. During these dragging days there was
little my Eskimos or I could do; so when Mukpollo proposed
that in our small open boat and his kayak we continue on
northward to the iviuk islands, I decided to make the at-
tempt, forlorn though it seemed to be, since it would be our
one last chance to make the film we had planned and waited
for so long. Our boat, sixteen feet long, and the kayak, we
would catamaran if we came upon rough weather.

What few islands lay along the way were small — the larg-
est less than a mile across. All of them were surf-bound, and
the distance between the small pinpoints some of them ap-
peared to be was often more than ten miles. Luck was
with us, however, for in the jumps we made from one to an-
other we had always smooth seas. We had put in a long
day’s travelling and the sun was low down in the west, when
Mukpollo, pointing northward to the smallest island speck of
all, said: “There is the last of the islands; I hope there are
walrus there.” We drew near, scanning every inch of shore-

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129

line; but the patch of tawn which we knew would mean a
sleeping herd was nowhere to be seen. That they might be
on the island’s far shore was our one last hope. We looked
about for a landing through the surf. Just beyond the shoul-
der of a little cove, “Iviuk! Iviuk!” called Mukpollo, and
sure enough, on the gleaming black surf-worn rocks lay a
great herd sprawled out asleep.

Down wind we went, careful as to muffled oars, and landed
waist-deep in the surf. Mukpollo went off alone toward
the sleeping herd; he returned, saying that they were undis-
turbed. However, it was much too dark for pictures; we
would have to wait until morning. “Yes,” said Mukpollo,
in answer to my fears, “if the wind holds in the same quarter
they will not get our scent.” Not daring to build a drift-
wood fire, we made out our evening meal on raw bacon, sea
biscuit, and cold water.

As luck would have it, the wind did hold. With harpoon
set and a stout seal line carefully coiled, and my motion
picture camera and film retorts in hand, off we crawled for
the walrus ground. The herd lay sleeping — twenty great
hulks guarded by two big bulls. At about minute intervals
they raised their heads over the snoring and swinishly grunt-
ing herd and slowly looked around, then sank to sleep again.
Slowly I snaked up to the sheltering screen of a big boulder,
and Mukpollo, the end of his harpoon line lashed around the
boulder, snaked more slowly still out toward them. Once
in the open he could move only when the sentinels dropped
their heads in sleep. Hours it seemed; but finally he had
crawled close in. The sentinels became suspicious and
stupidly stared toward him. Slowly they turned their

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MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

slobbering heads to and fro; Mukpollo swung his own head
in lugubrious unison. They rolled on their sides to scratch
themselves; Mukpollo as grotesquely did likewise. Finally
the sentinels seemed satisfied; their heads dropped in sleep
once more. Now only a dozen feet intervened; quickly
Mukpollo closed in. As I signalled he rose upon his feet, and
with his harpoon held high, like lightning he struck down at
the nearest bull. A bellow and a roar, and twenty great
walrus rolled with incredible speed down the wave-washed
slope of rocks to sea.

“The line! The line!” cried Mukpollo, “watch the line!”
— which was twanging in the air like a fiddle string. But
even as he called it snapped in two, and the bull he had
stalked so patiently dived and made away. Followed a
furious churn of water, and heads with black beady eyes and
long, wicked tusks shot up, their battle-cry resounding.
The wounded bull threshing the sea in his rage and fury, the
herd around him charging — I filmed and filmed, until the
last inch was ground away.

In two days we were back again to where Bill and the half-
breed were working on the still much-bruised and battered
Nastapoka.

But, confident now of our ability to hop, skip, and jump
between the islands, I decided to go on with Mukpollo to the
base. Came a two days’ gale, but the morning of the third
day broke clear, and though the swells still ran long and high
there was little wind. Off we struck for the next island, some
fifteen miles south. The speck of it we could barely make
out, for the swells ran higher than our boat was long.

The day was done before the boom of the surf rang in our

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131

ears. Overnight came heavy wind, and for two days we
waited for the sea to calm down. When again we launched
out, what wind there was followed us. So we sailed, cover-
ing in an hour what would have taken thrice that time by
paddle. By night we had reached the last island of the
chain. But one more gap, some twelve miles, lay between
us and home. Bowling on with the bone in our teeth, we
closed in to the sea-swept shore, looking for a landing.
What beach there was gave way to a short line of cliffs.
Beyond them we hoped to find a cove.

Of a sudden the blanket we had for sail began threshing in
a squall of wind. Before we could haul in sail we were
caught in the undertow. With the film retorts of the iviuk
aggie Mukpollo sprang clear. Omarolluk grabbed his har-
poon and my gun, and I followed with the cameras. The
kayak came out of it unhurt, but the open boat was no more.
Only her ribs remained.

Followed two days of wind and driving rain. What food
we had was sea biscuit and water, and shelter, the lee of
boulders. “The best thing now,” said Mukpollo, “is for
Tookalook to crawl inside my kayak and I will paddle down
to your big igloo and return with the kayak and your old
canoe.”

Came wind and rain. For two days I stayed within the
boulder shelter. The wind became almost a gale and the
seas drove high. As the murk of night crept through the
storm, thought I, “There’s going to be another day of it.”
And then above the din of wind and rain and sea came what
sounded like a faint “Chimo-0-0.” Mechanically I looked
out. With unbelieving eyes, I made out two men in my old

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MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

canoe — Tookalook, steering in the stern; and Mukpollo,
bailing with a pail. They had a piece of blanket for sail
with which to carry on. Mukpollo’s kayak, catamaraned,
was all that kept them from swamping as they sprang up
from nowhere to the crests of sprawling seas.

The day following we were home once more. Another
day and I had developed the “iviuk aggie”; and that evening
with Tookalook and Mukpollo looking on, I unrolled it be-
fore the lamplight. Every scene was there.

The reader will remember our difficulties with the Laddie
— how she had to be abandoned during the winter and used
up, piece by piece, for fuel. The only craft remaining in
which we could make the five hundred miles down through
the open bay to the mouth of the Moose River was the little
thirty-six-foot Nastapoka. Bruised and battered as she was.
Bill, as soon as he got her down to the base, pulled her up
and overhauled her, declaring that, gales or no, she would do
tor the big trip down. Of course, everything had to be left
behind save the clothes we wore, some three weeks’ food,
notes, maps, specimens, and the film — two boxes covered by
the Eskimos with waterproofing of sealskin carefully sewn.

On the thirteenth of September we climbed aboard. The
following morning we were fifty miles on and the last outlier
of the Belchers disappeared. Then for three days September
gales blew head on, and with all James Bay for sea room the
Nastapoka^ with mainsail reefed and rudder lashed, hove to.
When the gale blew out, from island to island we kept on,
standing behind them when the winds were against us; then
on again with each good slant. It was two weeks before we
reached the south end of the Bay.

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133

On the first of October we left the little Nastapoka snugged
up in the placid cove at “Moose.” In two weeks more we
saw the last of rapids, long bends, and portages. We “struck
the line.” The film was safe and sound. And then came
the end — while putting it in form, from nothing more for-
midable than my cigarette, the last inch of it went up in
smoke !

To make a long story short, I could not forget the film; I
decided to go north again, this time wholly for the purpose
of picturing the people I had come to like so well. Mr. John
Revillon and Captain Thierry Mallet, of Revillon Freres, un-
dertook to finance the project. Their fur post at Cape
Dufferin, on northeastern Hudson Bay, was to be the nucleus
for my work.

On the fifteenth of August we let go anchor in the mouth
of the Innusuk River, and the five gaunt and melancholy-
looking buildings which make up the post stood out on a
boulder-ridden slope less than half a mile a way.

Of the Eskimos who were known to the post, a dozen all
told were selected for the film. Of these Nanook, a charac-
ter famous in the country, I chose as my chief man. Be-
sides him, and much to his approval, I took on three younger
men as helpers. This also meant their wives and families,
dogs to the number of twenty-five, sledges, kayaks, and
hunting impedimenta.

As luck would have it, the first film to be made was that of
a walrus hunt. From Nanook I heard of the “Walrus Is-
land.” On its south end, a surf-bound beach, there were in
summer, he said, many walrus, judging from signs that had
been seen by a winter sealing crowd of Eskimos who at one

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MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

time had been caught there by a break-up of the ice. “The
people do not go out to the island in summer,” he con-
tinued, “for not only is it out of sight of land, but it is
ringed with heavy surf — dangerous landing for kayaks.
But for a long time I have had my eyes on your whaleboat,”
said he, “and I am sure, if the seas are smooth, it is big
enough forcrossingover, and just the thing for landing.”

Through the busy weeks that followed, time and time
again Nanook reminded me of the many, many moons it was
since he had hunted walrus. One morning I woke up to see
the profile of rising ground just beyond my window covered
with topeks. Nanook popped his head in through the door.
They were Eskimos from the north, he said, far away.
“And among them,” eagerly he continued, “is the very man
who saw the walrus signs on Walrus Island.”

Nanook was off, to return in a moment more leading the
great man through the door. We talked iviuk through the
hour. “ Suppose we go,” said I in conclusion. “ do you know
that you and your men may have to give up making a kill, if
it interferes with my film? Will you remember that it is the
picture of you hunting the iviuk that I want, and not their
meat?”

“Yes, yes, the aggie will come first,” earnestly he assured
me. “Not a man will stir, not a harpoon will be thrown
until you give the sign. It is my word.” We shook hands
and agreed to start next day.

For three days we lay along the coast, before the big seas
outside died down. The wind began blowing off the land.
We broke out our leg-o’-mutton. Before the day was half
done a film of gray far out in the west told us we were in

FILMS 135

sight of Walrus Island. By nightfall we closed in to the
thundering shadow that was its shore.

For hours we lounged around the luxury of a driftwood
fire, soaking in its warmth and speculating on our chances
for the morrow. When daylight came we made oflP to where
the stranger had told us he had found the walrus signs. It
was a crescent of beach pounded by the surf. While we
looked around, one after another the heads of a school of
walrus, their wicked tusks gleaming in the sun, shot up above
the sea.

By night all my stock of film was exposed. The whale-
boat was full of walrus meat and ivory. Nanook never had
such walrus-hunting and never had I such filming, as that on
Walrus Island.

Three days later the post bell clangs out the welcome news
that the kablunak is about to show his iviuk aggie. Men,'
old men, women, old women, boys, girls, and small children
file in to the factor’s house. Soon there is not an inch of
space to spare. The trader turns down the lamps. The
projector light shoots over the shocks of heads upon the blan-
ket which is the screen.

Then the picture. A figure appears. There is silence.
They do not understand. “See, it is Nanook!” the trader
cries. The Nanook in the flesh laughs his embarrassment.
“Ah! ah! ah!” they all exclaim. Then silence. The figure
moves. The silence deepens. They cannot understand.
They turn their heads. They stare at the projector. They
stare at its beam of magic light. They stare at Nanook,
the most surprised of all, and again their heads turn toward
the screen. They follow the figure which now snakes to-

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136

ward the background. There is something in the back-
ground. The something moves. It lifts its head. ‘

“Iviuk! iviuk!” shakes the room. The figure stands up,
harpoon poised in hand.

“Be sure of your harpoon! be sure of your harpoon!” the
audience cries.

The figure strikes down; the walrus roll off into the sea.
More figures rush in; they grab the harpoon line. For dear
life they hold on.

“Hold him! hold him!” shout the men. “Hold him! hold
him!” squeal the women. “Hold him!” pipe the children.

The walrus’s mate dives in, and by locking tusks attempts
rescue.

“Hold him!” gasps the crowd.

Nanook and his crew, although their arms seem to be
breaking, hold on. But slowly and surely the threshing
walrus drags the figures nearer sea.

“ Hold him ! hold him ! ” they despair. They are breathing
hard. “Dig in! dig in!” they rasp, as Nanook’s feet slip
another inch through the sand.

Deep silence. Suddenly the line sags, the crew, like a flash,
draw in the slack, and inch by inch the walrus is pulled in to
shore. Bedlam rocks the house.

The fame of the film spread far up and far down the coast.
Every strange Eskimo that came into the post Nanook
brought before me and begged that he be shown the iviuk
aggie.

Ill

Thirty or more years ago the interior of northern
Ungava teemed with bands of barren-ground cari-
bou. They numbered thousands. Now, however,
there are only a few straggling bands. A caribou kill of even
half-a-dozen after a long summer’s trip into the interior is an
event among the Eskimos. Skins for clothing consequently
are rare. The Cape Dufferin people are the poorest clad I
have ever seen. The clothing of Nanook and his crew was
no exception, so I cast around for means of getting skins with
which to make new and better costumes. No skins were to
be had. Those few fortunates who had new deerskin cloth-
ing refused to let it go for anything I might have in exchange.
I did secure for my own wear a much-worn kooletah (hooded
coat) and an old pair of deerskin trousers, but the present in
exchange was a brand-new Winchester and two hundred
cartridges.

Along about freeze-up time, one Nevalingha came into the
post to trade. Nanook let me know that he and his hunting
companion had made a deer kill in the far interior during the
summer — so far, however, from the coast, that they had had
to cache the skins and horns, expecting to bring them down
by sledge in winter. I approached Nevalingha in the hope
of securing the skins, but he explained that all of them were
promised, some to his father, some to his friends, some to his
brother, and so on. He couldn’t break his promises, and at

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MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

any rate they all needed them badly. As well did I need
them, and I made extravagant bids, but all that I had, said
he, could not compensate for the lack of warm winter cloth-
ing. Elowever, those to whom he was to have given skins
were prevailed upon to release him from his promises. I
was to give him food and ammunition and walrus meat for
his dogs, and upon his return with the skins was to pay him
as much as if they were all white foxes. Nevalingha, the
ne’er-do-well, became prospectively a rich man. He had
never stood high in the factor’s favour — “hell for eatin’ and
not much for foxes,” the latter said. He and his companions
were gone three weeks into a country in which the Eskimos
had never hunted foxes before. They returned with not
only the twenty-two deerskins, but to the amazement of the
factor, with the prime pelts of forty-three foxes — to an Es-
kimo a fabulous fortune.

When in December the snow lay heavy on the ground
Nanook and his men abandoned their topeks of sealskin and
a village of snow igloos sprung up around my wintering post.
They snow-walled my little hut to the eaves with thick
blocks of snow. My kitchen was their rendezvous — there
was always a five-gallon pail of tea steeping on the stove and
sea biscuit in the barrel. My little gramophone, too, was
common property. Caruso, Farrar, Riccardo, Martin,
McCormack, served their turns with Harry Lauder, A1
Jolson, and Jazz King orchestras. Caruso in the Pagliacci
prologue with its tragic ending was to them the most comic
record of the lot. Nanook shook with laughter; the children
rolled with merriment on the floor.

Nanook was always busy at some work or other, con-

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stantly on the lookout to barter for game if some hunting
team came in, to inquire into every strange hunting ex-
perience which might at some time in future serve for the
kablunak’s aggie; to see that the stoves kept drawing; to
keep the drift from clogging up my cabin windows. On days
when there was film developing he, “Harry Lauder,” their
wives and children shuttled from the cabin to the waterhole,
with dogs and sledge hauling water for the kablunak’s
thirsty coils of film — two ice-clogged barrels at a time.

One of Nanook’s problems was to construct an igloo large
enough for the filming of interior scenes. The average
Eskimo igloo, about twelve feet in diameter, was much too
small. On the dimensions I laid out for him, a diameter of
twenty-five feet, Nanook and his companions started in to
build the biggest igloo of their lives. For two days they
worked, the women and children helping them. Then came
the hard part — to cut insets for five large slab-ice windows
without weakening the dome. They had hardly begun when
the dome fell in pieces to the ground. “Never mind,” said
Nanook, “I can do it next time.”

For two days more they worked, but again with the same
result; as soon as they began setting in the ice windows their
structure fell to the ground. It was a huge joke this time,
and holding their sides they laughed their misfortune away.
Again Nanook began on the “big aggie igloo,” but this time
the women and children hauled barrels of water on sledges
from the waterhole and iced the walls as fast as they went up.
Finally the igloo was finished and they stood eyeing it as
satisfied as so many children over a house of blocks. The
light from the ice windows proved inadequate, however, and

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when the interiors were finally filmed the dome’s half just
over the camera had to be cut away, so Nanook and his fam-
ily went to sleep and awakened with all the cold of out-of-
doors pouring in.

To “Harry Lauder” I deputed the care of my cameras.
Bringing them from the cold outside into contact with the
warm air of the base often frosted them inside and out, which
necessitated taking them apart and carefully drying them
piece by piece. With the motion picture cameras there was
no difficulty, but with my Graflex I found to my sorrow such
a complication of parts that I could not get it together again.
For several days its “innards” lay strewn on my work table.
“Harry Lauder” finally volunteered for the task of putting
them together, and through a long evening before a flickering
candle and with a crowd of Eskimos around ejaculating their
“ayee’s” and “ah’s,” he managed to succeed where I had
failed.

Never shall I forget his proffered ministrations to an
ulcerated tooth. After witnessing the inadequacy of all the
resources of my medicine kit and the disastrous failure of an
attempt to pull, he came to me, with a tiny drill which he
had laboriously fashioned out of a tenpenny nail and
mounted in a carpenter’s brace.

Between Nanook and “Harry Lauder” and myself there
never was a serious misunderstanding. But that they should
arise between myself and some of the Eskimos with whom I
was less intimate was, I suppose, inevitable. They were due
for the most part to my own inability, perhaps, to com-
prehend exactly what they meant to say and under ordinary
circumstances were soon explained away. Only once under

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peculiar stress did misunderstanding assume serious pro-
portions. This was with one Aviuk, on our return from an
expedition up the coast. For three days we had been with-
out oil — three days of subsisting on cold food and no tea —
when we came to a cache and a gallon of the precious fuel.
The following day, travelling with difficulty in the face of a
bitterly cold drifter, we had halted to disentangle the snarled
traces of the team, and Aviuk called to me saying that the
oil was gone — had been left behind. Only then did I realize
all that that oil meant. I could not contain myself. “Harry
Lauder” and his companion, scenting trouble, discreetly
withdrew, one ahead and one behind, and were lost in a blur
of drift. Aviuk had drawn his snow knife from his belt and
now, brandishing it in front of me, was pouring out a lava
flow in Eskimo. The harpoons lay lashed in front of me on
the sledge, and I was debating my chances of seizing one in
time when it dawned upon me that Aviuk’s rather startling
pantomime was not intended offensively. Out of the drift
at this juncture came “Harry Lauder” holding aloft the lost
article — an old tin can I had thrown away! The incident
was closed that night over a love feast of dried apples with
plenty of sugar, well cooked and warm. All through Janu-
ary the Eskimos complained of the hard winter — no seals.
The sea, said they, was frozen for miles and miles, farther
out than in any other year they could remember. There had
been a lapse of days in the constant winter winds and the
movement and the milling of the icefields were stilled, and
like magic seal-hunting lanes and tidal pools were frozen
fast. Until heavy gales again should blow, the doors of
their hunting grounds were closed. Some spoke of the long

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and fruitless vigils, day by day and through the nights, over
the breathing holes of seal; some, without seal oil for their
lamps, of the darkness of the igloos. They spoke even of the
madness that comes from starvation, and in distress of mind
sought advice as to what they should do with a madman who
terrorized and paralyzed the whole village, threatening the
safety of women and children and keeping the men from their
hunting. There were tales of bear, themselves hungry for
the seal upon which they live, prowling about the encamp-
ments at night. One old couple asleep in their igloo had been
wakened by the snow of the igloo dome falling on their faces,
to see by the feeble lamplight the mask of a bear sniffing and
growling as he moved his head to and fro — sniffing the good
seal-oil smell of lamp and clothing. Desperately enough the
old woman had seized her trimming stick, lighted it, and
holding it to the bear’s nose had kept the beast at bay while
her husband crawled outside for his harpoon!

The walrus hunting having proved successful, Nanook as-
pired to bigger game — a bear hunt, no less, at Cape Sir
Thomas Smith, some two hundred miles northward. “Here,”
said Nanook, “is where the she-bear den in the winter, and
it seems to me that we might get the big, big aggie there.”

He went on to describe how in early December the she-
bear dens in huge drift banks of snow. There is nothing to
mark the den save a tiny vent, or airhole, which is melted
open by the animal’s body heat. His companions would
remain at either side of me, rifles in hand, whilst he with his
snow knife would open up the den, block by block. The
dogs in the meantime would all be unleashed and like wolves
circle the opening. Mrs. Bear’s door opened, Nanook, with

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nothing but his harpoon, would be poised and waiting.
The dogs baiting the quarry — some of them with her light-
ning paws the bear would send hurtling through the air; him-
self dancing here and there — he pantomimed the scene on
my cabin floor, using my fiddle bow for harpoon — waiting
to dart in for a close-up throw; this, he felt sure, would be a
big, big picture (aggie peerualluk). I agreed with him.

“With good going ten days will see us there. Ten days
for hunting on the Cape, then ten days for coming home
again. But throw in another ten days for bad weather, and
let’s see [counting on his fingers] — that makes four times my
fingers — more than enough to see us through.”

“All right,” said I, “we’ll go.” And Nanook, his eyes
shining, went off to spread the news.

For two weeks we prepared. First of all Nanook and
“Harry Lauder” sledged out over the sea ice for walrus meat
we had cached under boulders on the walrus island. Every
night we cooked our big iron pot full of pork and beans and
poured them into a large sack, which hung from a hook out
of doors, to freeze them. Nanook relashed with tough seal-
skin thongs and smoothed the runners of his staunchest
sledge, whilst his and the wives of his crew on my cabin
floor sewed and sewed boots, kooletahs, and dogskin mitts,
and fashioned a new sealskin dog whip six fathoms long.
Most important of all were the bows and arrows and bear
spears, all to be headed, not with the kablunak’s iron, but
with stones, as in days of long ago.

The day before the start four sledges of Eskimos came in
from the north, all of them complaining of the hard winter —
no seal. They told us, moreover, that from Cape Smith on

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down to Cape DufFerin no Eskimos remained. All had
sledged south, for everywhere was the hunting condition the
same. With no Eskimos along the coast to depend upon
for dog food, to get dog food, said Nanook, when the supply
on the sledge was gone, we must ourselves kill. This might
mean spending weeks in hunting. So we cast around for an
extra team and two men to come as a relay part way: but
though there were willing men, no one had the dogs to spare.

The seventeenth of January was cold enough. I
scratched a peephole through the frost enamel of my
window. Sundogs, two faint balls of brass, flanked
the weak, low-hanging sun. Snow smoke swept the ground,
the igloo domes near by, and the jowl of a distant granite
hill. Before I had finished my last scalding mug of tea there
was a knock on the cabin door, and Nanook, brushing the
snow from his furs, walked in. He smiled “good morning,”
as he took up my duffle-bag and eiderdown and handed
them out to be lashed aboard the sledge.

“This is good wind,” observed Nanook, as we halted some
three hours on to untangle the traces of the team. “See how
it packs the snow.” Before the day was half done the snow
was like a pavement. The big sledge swayed and rocked
with speed. By nightfall the wild fan of dogs were scram-
bling like a pack of wolves up the slope of the last igloo vil-
lage on the coast, miles beyond the point we had hoped to
make.

By daybreak we were off again, helter-skelter down a
steep slope, a-crash through the tidal ice, then off straight
north through twisting snow-smoke on an unending sweep of
frozen sea. All day long we jogged, our faces masked by ice,
the frozen sweat of heavy running. On some of the small
whalebacks of islands which were strung out along the way

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we saw the empty shells of igloos of hungry Eskimos who
long since had sledged south in search of seal. And before
the day was done we picked out the black dots of many
Eskimos and teams. They were the last of the Eskimos
from the north — six sledges bound south for seal. They
thronged around the sledge, hungry for hunting news and
any crumbs of food we might have to spare.

By nightfall we were beyond the last high hill. Ahead
the coast led off, a thin black line, not much higher than the
monotone of white through which it wound. “We are well
on the way,” said Nanook, spacing the post, our position, and
Cape Smith with his snow knife on the snow. “Five days
and we will be there.” By dark the team, long since fed,
were asleep, snugged up in the snow and blanketed by the
drift which ran low along the ground.

Nanook never built a better igloo. The edges of its
dominoes of snow were sapphires gleaming in the seal lamp’s
yellow light. Of royal height and width was the sleeping
bunk Nanook carved for me out of blocks of snow. Over the
oil lamp I cooked up a brewis of sea biscuit and codfish and
stewed dried apples for the crew. We went to sleep on
Nanook’s stories of seal and fox and bear hunting on the
Cape.

By candlelight we gulped breakfast, and at the first crack
of dawn crawled out — but what a sight! The down of new-
fallen snow lay heavy on the ground. Not a breath of wind
moved over it. The team moved like a snail. Nanook s
long whip cracked through the air.

“ Aput peeungatwaluk” [bad snow, bad snow], complained
the men. We kept far out on the smooth ice at sea, so

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Nanook never knew just where we were, until on the eighth
day at sundown we sighted on the hump of a small island an
abandoned village of snow houses, the black holes of their
doorways gaping and broken down. “To this place we
have taken ten days,” Nanook glumly said. “With good
going it is only three days from home. Only three days
from home, and our dog food almost gone.”

Morning came with a stiff wind swinging in from sea.
With every hour the going grew harder and the team once
more worked with a semblance of their old-time speed.
When evening came on, with Nanook I climbed to the crest
of an island, hoping he would sight some familiar landmark.
But the coast was all the same — a thin black line. Mechani-
cally our eyes followed it as it wound off into the north, until
suddenly we caught sight of what first seemed a wisp of blue-
gray cloud, indefinable, far away. I could not believe it
when Nanook said it was the Cape. “ But far off,” he added,
“all of five days away.” The evening through the crew
hunched up over mending and I from the depths of my eider-
down listened again to Nanook’s adventures on the Cape.

“Three winters ago on the Cape,” said Nanook, “there
were many, many bear. One night the snarling and yelping
of the dogs in the igloo tunnel woke me. In the igloo, head
and shoulders through the door, was a bear. He had come
in through the snow tunnel. Behind him the dogs were bit-
ing and snapping at his legs and haunches; he could not back
out and he could not come through. My harpoon and spears
were outside. I must cut a hole through the igloo walls; but
the walls — it was an old igloo — were almost ice. The bear

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was growling, showing his teeth — his lips were all foam. If
the dogs would let him he would smash down the door. I
cut through the igloo wall and got my spear. My family
were frightened.”

Said “Harry Lauder”: “Annunglung and his mother
[Annunglung’s father was deadl killed a bear last winter on
the Kogaluk. Annunglung is only a boy. He and his
mother were going from the igloo to the river’s mouth to fish.
They met a bear. They wanted that bear, for they were
hungry. But all they had was a bow and arrow. The dogs
brought the bear to a stand. Annunglung shot all his ar-
rows, but he did not kill the bear. They had nothing left.
They wanted the bear, for they were very, very hungry.
One arrow was sticking in the bear; the others were near him
on the ground. Annunglung, to fool the bear, jumped
toward his head, and his mother ran in. With one hand she
grabbed an arrow on the ground. With the other hand
she grabbed the arrow sticking in the bear. They killed
the bear.”

“Yes,” said Nanook, “on the island straight out from
Cape Wolstenholme the kablunak’s big ship that hunts
whales struck a reef [the Captain Grant disaster, during the
fall of 1911]. When the ship struck the reef the kablunak
told the Eskimos who were aboard to go ashore. Then the
storm came. The ship and the thirty kablunak went down.
The Eskimos became very hungry. They had lost their
weapons and dogs and kayaks and tents, which sank with
the ship. But they had the white man’s knife, and casks
drifted in from the wreck. Out of the wood of the casks, not
much longer than my arm [measuring] they made bows and

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arrows. And it was with these bows and arrows that they
killed bear and ate meat and made clothing.”

Bear prospects on the Cape interested us most. All over
again we talked of the “big, big aggie.” Nanook picked up
a hunk of snow. With a few simple strokes he carved a
miniature bear. With it before him he made tracings in the
snow. “The bear will stick to the cave,” said he, “until we
open it block by block, for her cubs are very small. [The
cub at birth is no larger than a rat.] But be careful of the
cave,” said Nanook. “The roof is thin, not strong,” and
he wound up with an unintelligible exclamation. Explained
“Harry Lauder,” the post-trained: “You fall in, bear him
saucy.”

We were breaking camp before the sun had cleared the
horizon. The dogs fought like wolves as they wedged in
through the door of the igloo we had just vacated; the crew
tried vainly by grasping legs and tails to drag them out for
harnessing; Nanook, his arms around the master dog, carried
him bodily to the sledge. I unlimbered the Akeley, hoping
to get a few feet of it all on film. But, to my dismay, as soon
as I started grinding, so brittle was the film that it broke into
bits, like so much wafer glass. The thermometer read thirty-
seven degrees below. We were up against it, since thirty-
seven below and more would be common in the weeks to
come. Clearly, unless some remedy were found, it would be
useless to keep on.

We went back into camp. By keeping the film retorts in
the igloo I found that within the hour they took on its tem-
perature. The film regained its ductility. I told off Na-
nook to bury the film retorts and camera in his deerskin robe

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henceforth when we broke camp in the morning. The crew
were convulsed over what they called “the babies” for
which he had to care.

Through the next three days we strained our eyes for an-
other sight of the Cape, but drift filled the air. Even the
coastline, never more than six to ten miles off in the east, we
glimpsed only occasionally, and then so faintly that Nanook
could only guess at where we were.

The first of February broke with a drifter. All day we
toiled slowly on through big, rough ice. But by sundown
we made a landfall, and the toil and care of heavy sledging
were forgotten. Nanook pointed to a patch, faint, far-off,
through the birl of snow. He was sure it was the Cape.
There was a shift in the wind and momentarily the drift
thinned out; but the patch was nothing but a small island no
more than a mile away. “The Cape gets farther away,”
complained the crew.

A luckless, glum camp was our igloo that night. Nanook’s
strong dog had been crippled in the rough ice. To-morrow
the dog food would be at an end. What food remained for
Nanook and his crew was a share of mine — poor substitute
for seal. There were no stories about the Cape, and as to
where we were Nanook refused to answer.

All through the next day Nanook and the crew walked far
out on the sea ice, hunting seal. When evening came I
watched the black specks of them return. “No seals,” said
Nanook, as he crawled through the snow tunnel into camp;
“and,” he went on to relate, shaking the snow dust from his
furs, “I waited over one hole all day.” I told him it was not
the kind of hunting I should care to do. Said he, “I have

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waited three days for a seal. And,” he concluded simply,
“the seal never came. But wait till we get to the Cape,”
hopefully he went on. “Nowhere can one find a better place
for seal. There never was such hunting ground.”

For two days snow smoke filled the air. Then the wind
broke. By igloo time the gray pall which so long had over-
spread the sky gave way to a glowing ground of blue. We
climbed a near-by mound of ice. From the big disk of sun,
half-sunken in the sea, we watched a flood of amber creep
over the wilderness of ice and snow, over spires and pinnacles,
the emeralds of miles and miles of rough icefields. Banks of
mists hung like curtains in the north. “Behind them,” said
Nanook, “lies the Cape.” But of the Cape there was no
sign. The sun’s upper rim was almost level with the sea.
We were turning toward camp, when slowly the searchlight
from the sun lifted up. The mists caught fire. Through
their red and salmon embers broke the gigantic head and
shoulders of the Cape.

Night gloom was down in a moment more; the Cape was
wrapped in cloud. Nothing remained but a splash of copper
where the sun had fallen into the sea.

Again came three drift-swept days. We saw no land save
near-by islands and occasionally a black thread of coast.
More slowly we travelled, for the dogs were weak. There
were fruitless hunts for seal. The evenings were all the
same — mending and keeping gear in repair, and Nanook’s
tales. One night he told us how he and his mother (he was
a boy then) were travelling through the interior with a band
of Eskimos. Two of them died of starvation ; he himself was
badly frozen. He said dogs were good eating; he with the

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others ate them then. “Harry Lauder” told me too that
dogs were good eating; he told us that one winter they had
nothing to eat for a long time but dogs. For a month they
had no light for their igloos.

The fourth day was clear. Again there were sundogs, and
the coast hung miraged in the stark sky. But notwithstand-
ing, Nanook told us he had found a landmark. It was Mos-
quito Bay, and the Cape was near — not more than two days
away. But even by noon we found no bay to cross. Our
faces fell; Nanook bowed his head and steadfastly refused to
look upon the confounding mirage again.

Whenever we crossed cracks or fissures in the ice Nanook
scanned them for signs of seal. Some he followed far afield,
only to spend an hour’s hard running to catch up with us
again. We looked anxiously for the Cape, but everywhere
in the north were nothing but ponderous banks of clouds.
As evening drew near, Nanook said that we were near the
mouth of Mosquito Bay, and pointed to a speck of hill which
broke the thin low line of coast. We turned in, cheerful over
the prospect of crossing it on the morrow. The crew were
filled with jokes and chatter about bear and seal and foxes
that were waiting for them on the Cape.

We were off at daybreak next day. But the long hours
dragged one by one, and still no sign of the landmark we had
been looking for so long. Nanook, ashamed to join us at
the sledge, was a black dot on the ice ahead. Every little
way we stopped to rest the dogs; the poor brutes were starv-
ing; Tooktoo, our big brown leader, was too weak to carry
on. We lashed him on the sledge. To keep them from
freezing, one of us now and then rubbed his feet.

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The twenty-second day. Again we carried the brown dog
on the sledge. His groans troubled the team, who would
halt and turn their heads toward him. We took turns at
putting our shoulders to the sledge, for the team could barely
keep it moving. When we halted to rest them and untangle
traces Nanook, pointing to Tooktoo, said he was dying. He
killed him with a bear spear. I suggested we might take the
carcass to use as dog food; but Nanook, holding it aloft, said
it was a skeleton. So we left poor old Tooktoo, a brown
patch lying on the snow.

Again we took turns at putting our shoulders to the sledge.
We saw nothing of the coast, so thick was the drive of snow.
Slowly the day dragged on. Nanook talked to, urged, and
cajoled the broken team. Glumly enough we were debating
whether it would not be wise to stop, igloo for the night, and
rest up the team; when Nanook pointed with his harpoon to
a break in the sky ahead. High up from where the line of
coast should be loomed a patch of gray and black, guttered
by ravines of snow.

“The Cape ! ” he called. Then the sun flooded everything,
and everywhere the shroud before us fell away; and a gigan-
tic flank, wrinkled, seamed and scarred, rose for a thousand
feet until it touched the sky.

Every dog knew we were near the journey’s end. Not for
days had our lump of sledge moved so fast. The night was
down, but within the hour we were on the ice foot of the Cape
cutting an igloo in the snow. I fell asleep to the drone of
Nanook’s voice, running over plans for the great seal hunt in
the morning.

When I wakened, though daylight was still an hour away.

154

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

Nanook, by fitful candlelight, was going over his spears and
harpoons. He smacked his lips when he talked of seal.
Where we were camped the rough sea ice, jammed high
against the shoreline of the Cape, prevented our seeing the
sea. So, with our hearts in our mouths, we climbed a rise
for a sight of Nanook’s great hunting ground. For some time
we strained our eyes out over that white waste before we
realized that nowhere was there an open lane or dot of tidal
pool, but everywhere it was unbroken — solid ice, jammed
in by the wind and as barren as the desert over which we had
come.

From my diary:

Wednesday^ February 8th. — Gale all through the night.
Its roar resounds despite thick igloo walls. Nanook went
out at daybreak; returned in half an hour. “Too much
wind,” said he. Saw tracks of four bear which must have
crossed ice foot within sight of igloo some time during night.
Our dogs either failed to smell them or were too weak to
sound alarm. Indoors all day. Constantly comes the boom
and thunder of the icefields as they jam and raft high along
the coast.

Thursday. — Gale subsides. Myself not very fit. In
igloo all day. When among the icefields sealing Nanook
kills one, but very small. So hungry they couldn’t wait to
carry it to igloo for flensing, but gorged on it where it lay.
When Nanook came crawling through the igloo dragging
what remained of the carcass he had a battle royal with the
dogs.

Through the evening Nanook talked of ice; of how he and
his two hunting companions were nearly caught on the ice

H I M S E L F— W ETALLTOK

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155

pack which drove out to sea. “Where it happened is not a
half-day’s sledging from this igloo. We were out on the
rough ice after bear. We had made a kill and were on our
way in to land, when we came upon a lane of open water
which stood between us and the ice foot of the Cape. Far
off in the distance the lane narrowed. We dropped our kill
and made off as fast as we could travel, but nowhere was the
lane narrow enough to leap. Just in time we spied an ice
pan. It was about the length of a sledge. With the ice
pan for boat, our harpoons for paddles, we paddled across.”

Then each of the crew told of some misadventure he had
had at some time or other on the ice. “Harry Lauder,”
with his father and mother, the mother carrying a babe in
arms, were adrift all through one moon off the Gulf Hazard
coast. When the west winds packed the icefield in to the
mainland where they landed was Cape Dufferin, two hun-
dred and fifty miles north of Gulf Hazard. The winter was
almost done before they saw home again.

“I remember Comock of Kovik, just north of here,” said
Nanook. “Comock and three men, wives, and children
were out on the ice. The ice broke while they slept. Two
of the men, a woman, and three children drifted off one way
and Comock and the rest off the other. The others were
never seen or heard of again. But Comock and his crowd,
after days and days adrift, touched land. It was the big
island far off from Kovik [Mansfield Island, seventy miles
off the coast]. On this island did Comock and his people
live. They were very poor. They clothed themselves with
skins of the bear. Their sinew [thread] they cut from the
intestines of the salmon. They got very hungry for their

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

156

old friends and homeland, so one day they put out upon the
ice as it was parting from the shoreline, hoping that the west
winds would blow long enough to carry them over to the
mainland. But for a moon they drifted here and there and
everywhere, and when they landed it was on an island off
Cape Wolstenholme.

“They were very poor,” Nanook repeated. “They lived
on sea pigeons which they killed with stones. With what
sealskins they had and what driftwood, walrus bones, and a
deer horn they found along the shore, they made an omiak.
But the omiak was not large enough to hold them all, who
now numbered thirteen men, women, babes, and children.
So they blew up seal bladders and tied them on the sides of
their omiak. Comock’s head wife held a long stick in her
hands so that she might keep the children still. Where they
reached the mainland was on the straight up-and-down coast
of Cape Wolstenholme. On the first narrow ledge that they
could see they landed, for a strong wind was rising. The
landing was barely big enough to hold their omiaks and
themselves, but here for two days they had to stay. The
seas drenched them. When the water was calm again they
launched their omiak, paddled around the big nose of the
Cape, and landed in the snug cove on the other side. Old
friends greeted them when they walked out on shore. They
must have been glad,” said Nanook in conclusion.

“How long was it,” I asked, “from the time they were
swept out to sea before they reached their homeland again?”

“Ten summers and ten winters were the number of the
notches that Comock cut on the handle of his harpoon,”
Nanook replied.

FILMS

157

Friday. — Living gale from southward. Coal-oil almost
gone. Nanook improvised a seal-oil lamp out of a piece of
driftwood, fireproofing the wick side with a strip of tin.
Depend upon it for warmth but it gives a woful amount.
Nothing to do but keep in sleeping-bag and huddle from the
cold and listen to the bitter wind as it pipes above the hiss of
driving snow about the igloo dome. Shadows show, through
the snow walls, of great clouds of drift as they go birling by.

Saturday. — Sleepless, I listened all night for a let-up to the
wail of wind. Dawn was still, but crawling out-of-doors
everything was blanketed with rime and heavy snow. With-
in the hour the wind whipped around to the north and was
blowing another gale. Again no sealing. Our igloo was
much begrimed. The heap of picked bones in the lamp cor-
ner was a sight. Nanook with his snow knife scraped away
the litter; as he brushed it out through the door the dogs
turned the place into pandemonium with their fighting. We
had to club hard to prevent them forcing an entrance.
Later during the day the dogs ate up some of our precious
seal line and a sealskin bow-and-arrow case which we had
cached — out of harm’s way, we supposed — on top the igloo
dome.

Overnight the gale subsided. We broke camp and put
out along the Cape’s north flank. Within the mile we
sighted a white fox jumping wildly to get free of a trap
Nanook had set the day before. The fox was no sooner
killed and the sledge started again than Nanook, squatted
on the sledgeload, skinned the fox and shared with the men
rare tidbits of the still-warm flesh. Blood drops fell on the
trail, and on his bootlegs were great red splotches. When I

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

158

remarked that they must be very hungry, said Nanook, “We
have had no food.” I remonstrated. Said he, only enough
remained for me, and he added, “From now on there will be
no sharing.” Iglooed on the ice foot. Igloo very cold.
My cold feet prevented sleep, but Nanook, crawling over,
took off his kooletah, placed them on his stomach, put them
under the pits of his arms and rubbed them until they were
warm through and through.

Monday. — At dark men returned. They saw the tracks of
eight bear through various hours of the day, all of them going
far out to sea on their hunt for seal. Nanook returned late.
How we waited to hear above the din of dog howling some
word of bear caves! But there were many gulps of food and
sips of tea before he gave us any news. Saw many, many
signs, but no caves. The bear are far out on the ice edge at
sea, he thinks. He fears snow is too heavily drifted by re-
cent gales and dens may be impossible to find. “Harry
Lauder,” for the last two days sulking, now tries to regain
my good-will — on the alert to cut my tobacco, overhaul my
boots and dogskin mitts, and keep my sleeping bag, which
is as stiff as so much tin, limber and clear of rime and snow.

Tuesday. — Cheerless day. Very cold west wind. Met
many bear tracks as we travelled. Nowhere a sign of open
water. We came upon a flock of ducks wheeling over the
rough ice. The sight filled me with elation, for I felt sure
that open water must be near. But Nanook was grim and
silent. The ducks were starving — nearly frozen; they
showed it in the feebleness of their flights. Every drift bank
in the chaos of seamed and ribbed lava which makes up the
Cape’s tremendous flank we scanned for signs of bear. By

FILMS

159

nightfall we reached the point where the Cape buries its nose
in a snarl of frozen sea. Nowhere was there a sight of open
water.

Wednesday. — The men went off early sealing in the rough
ice, and Nanook with one of the dogs in leash went up bear-
cave hunting among the ranges. I dare not go far from the
igloo, for no matter how securely I block the igloo door the
dogs start digging at the igloo walls the moment my back is
turned. The men returned at dark. No seals, but far out
they saw a narrow lane of open water.

Thursday. — The dogs all in. Whenever I crawl out
through the tunnel I have to lift them like sacks of flour out
of my way. During the morning I saw a blue lane of open
water out in the west. Time and time again I climbed to a
lookout for a sight of the men, fearful that they might dare
too much or be swept out to sea.

Friday^ Saturday^ Sunday. — Same — no seals.

Monday. — Same, no seals. No light, no oil for lamp.
Igloo very cold. Morning and night three candles under an
old lard pail thawed out my hunks of frozen beans.

Tuesday. — Nanook broke open the snow-block door his
face all smiles. No wonder: he shoved forward a small seal.
But his smile was more than a small seal smile. An ogjuk
— big — longer than the spread of his arms— lay out in a safe
cache on the ice. Everywhere the sea ice was opening, he
said. Signs of bear were everywhere — yes, and not a har-
poon’s throw from the igloo they picked out the trail of a big
one that not long before had passed by. (Probably I was
asleep.) What a night! The dogs’ bellies full, Nanook and
the crew almost drunk with feasting — chunks and chunks

i6o MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

and chunks of meat. Grunted like walruses when they
turned in.

Wednesday. — Never have any of our igloos been so warm.
From the hoar-frosted prostrate forms of the men rise
streams of vapour. So much for the body heat that comes
from raw seal-meat eating.

WITHIN a week the dogs were on their feet again,
and we struck off with a groaning sledgeload of red
seal meat back along our old trail along the ice
foot of the Cape. Less than half way Nanook, halting
the team, pointed up to where the crest of the Cape, like the
wrinkled foil of silver, stood out against the sky. Over
the crest, he continued, the Eskimos used to portage to the ice
foot on the southern flank. We could save a long journey
by climbing it, and what was more, we would be in the bear-
den country the while. He hoped I wouldn’t mind the climb.
We would have to get in harness with the dogs and go at it
in easy stages, just a little sledge load at a time — and he pan-
tomimed the operation with his snow knife in the snow. !

We see-sawed over the ice foot into land and struck up
the Cape’s big slope. But sometimes the twelve tigerish
dogs and we four, bent half way to the ground, could only
move the sledge by feet and inches. And there were drift
banks into which the sledge jammed its nose and died. Leap
after leap of the team and our “heave’s” and “ho’s” failed
to dislodge it; we had to give back some precious feet, with
snow knives smooth out the trail, and start again. The
leaps and lunges of the team soon played them; each dog
would blame his neighbour for their common plight, and
forthwith fight to kill. Nanook’s long whip, spitting terror
amongst them, and the crew and I, pulling on traces, were

i6i

i62

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

the only means of preventing death there and then. Finally
cowed, they gasped at full length on the snow and we must
wait long minutes until they got their wind again.

Whirlpools of drift, spinning down the slope, plastered
us. By the time we reached the crest the wind was running
wild. Nanook went off to locate igloo snow. I crouched
behind the bulwark of the sledge and watched the towers and
spirals and jets of drift bound from ledge to ledge, from slope
to slope down to the ice foot, a white hair-line nine hundred
feet below; the milky shreds and strings which were snow
smoke, dragging over the illimitable fields of ice, over the
sapphire which was sea, and on into the vague west where
they were drowning the big orange of sun.

Never did Nanook’s spiral of snow blocks build up so
slowly. Before the first tier was up I crouched behind it and
Nanook with his snow knife cut off a hunk of snow and tried
to rub out the white of my frozen cheeks and nose. By
the time the last block was set, black night was down.
Nanook and the crew fed the dogs, coiled the harnesses, and
sealed up the igloo’s door. I had camp all made. The moss
wick of the seal-oil lamp was sending off heart-warming little
tongues of flame; hunks of snow in the pot above it were
melted and warming up for scalding draughts of tea. Fro-
zen seal meat and my beans were thawing; the willow mats
were down, and the sleeping bags lay unrolled on the igloo’s
floor of snow. When Nanook had thawed out his frozen
white nose and whiter cheeks and rubbed them red again,
said he, his arms sweeping round the sparkling white dome
which sheltered us : “ Oh, surely no igloo of the kablunak is so
wonderful!”

FILMS

163

“Amen,” said I.

For six days we hunted for bear dens among the pot holes
along the talus slopes and through the deep ravines of the
Cape’s south flank. But even Nanook had to give in, for
recent gales and heavy drifts made success impossible.
“Had we more time,” he pleaded, “even two weeks more,
surely we would find a den.” But there was still the bulk of
the winter’s filming to be done down at the base, and the
margin of time to do it in, even if we returned in record
time, would be very small.

At daybreak we struck out for home — the team a-gallop, or
overrun by the coasting sledge dragging in their harnesses
through the snow. In two hours we were across the ice foot
and striking south across the frozen sea.

Day followed day — yellow suns and cloudless skies. The
snow in those long slants of ethereal light was as glowing as
so much satin, in folds upon the land and a blanket upon the
sea. Sundogs — smudges of brass and ochre — hung for
hours in the blue enamel of the sky.

Within ten days we reached the abandoned igloos of the
trip going north, and home, said Nanook, smiling from ear
to ear, was only three days off. But overnight came an-
other drifter. For five days we crawled. The dogs’ seal
meat was finished; for Nanook and the crew there was little
left but bones; my beans were down to crumbs; and home,
with the going as it was, was still days away.

We were travelling along the lowest of the coast — so low
that oftentimes we hardly knew whether we were on land or
sea. Said Nanook: “The cache of oil we laid on the up
trip is still two days farther on, but some time to-day we

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

164

should see the stump of driftwood which I found the day we
reached the abandoned igloos. I left it up-ended in the
snow — we’ll get some red heat to-night if we find it.” But
though we hugged the coast that precious fuel, the only drift-
wood we found on all its two hundred miles, we never saw
again. When night came, cross bars from the sledge and four
two-hundred-foot rolls of film was the makeshift that boiled
our tea.

For the next three days what food sustained the team was
the igloo’s scraps and crumbs. More rolls of film and splin-
ters from the sledge made up our fuel. When we broke
camp on the fourth morning the sky was clear; the wind was
strong. The snow was packing hard. Said Nanook: “If
we strip the sledge of its load, of the cameras, of the sleeping-
bags and all, we’ll see home by nightfall.” So we left every-
thing within the igloo, sealed up the snow block of door, and
struck out for home. Nanook kept far out in the lead, and
ever when the team slowed down he pretended to be spear-
ing, or lying down with his arms and legs imitated the flip-
pers of a basking seal. The team, weak though they were,
never made such speed.

But when night came on there was no sign of the river’s
mouth or the post’s cabin lights. The darkness thickened;
we stumbled over ridges and drifts of snow. Nanook called
out from the gloom ahead to halt and wait while he scouted
for a course to follow through the hills ahead. Turning the
sledge up on one runner we crouched behind it. An hour or
more Nanook was gone. When he returned said he: “There
is not light enough to see. Nothing to do but igloo till day-
light comes.” But Nanook and the crew had hardly un-

FILMS 165

sheathed their knives when the wavering bands of the aurora
began gathering in the north, and light as bright as moon-
light lit up the snow. We swung off through a valley among
the hills. Streamers like the fringes of titanic curtains hung
over us, sometimes so low that even Nanook reached out
his hand as if to feel them. For I do not know how many
minutes, they swayed and swung, then more gentle became
their undulations — their glow was dying. We had begun to
believe the festival was over, when, like the lash of whips un-
coiling, they broke out — maelstroms! wheels! whirlpools!
lavender! cream! and apple-green! The light they shed, a
cast of green, drenched the humble hills and slopes of snow.
“ Kapay ! ” exclaimed Nanook. “ Kapay ! ” echoed the crew.

The baying of a pack of wolves brought us to our senses.
The wolves were the dog army of the post.

“What — no bear!” said Stewart, the post trader, who
with his interpreter came stamping into my cabin to welcome
Nanook and me and get news of the trip. “What,” he re-
peated, “six hundred miles of travellin’, eight weeks away
an’ no bear!”

“Too bad, too bad,” he muttered, “an’ just to think that
a week come Friday two huskies got a she-bear an’ two cubs
in a cave. ’T would have made a fine aggie, they said, what
with the fightin’ an’ all — throwin’ the dogs through the air
an’ chargin’ here an’ chargin’ there; an’,” he continued,
rubbing it in, “all this less’n a day away!”

SPRING in the north is long in coming. It was not
until the last week in May that two lone honking
geese flying low over the post brought the natives
running from their tents exclaiming “Awyung [spring] is
here!” By the end of June all the snow, save deep drifts in
ravines and along the slopes of hills, was gone. Arctic
flowers, solid masses of purple, white, and yellow, sprang up
through the tawn and russet mosses of the plains. Flock
upon flock of geese like regiments came sailing through the
sky, and coveys of ptarmigan hovered near the post and even
perched upon the houses. Arctic salmon, burnished steel
and silver, teemed in the mouths of the streams that tumbled
into the sea, and among the islands lying off the coast were
swarms of nesting sea pigeons and eiders. Every kayak that
came paddling in was loaded, decks over, with scores of
geese, salmon, eiders, and dozens of eggs for trade. The sun
went down about ten and rose again about three; it did not
go far below the blue line of northern hills, and the glow of it
shot constantly up the sky, splashing colour on each cloud
bank that sailed by. Everyone now slept when he willed;
the voices of some rioting group of youngsters were always
in the air.

Nanook was restless; the wanderlust again was upon him.
He knew, he said one day when we were making the whale-
boat ready for sea, where there were many white whales.

i66

FILMS

167

They played in a little bottle-necked harbour some three
days’ kayaking up the coast. We might, he continued hope-
fully, get the “big aggie” there.

Icefields still lay along the coast, the blue-green ribbons of
water lanes amongst them ever changing with the working
of the winds and tide. Came a driving nor’easter herding
the floes to sea, and before the day was ended all that re-
mained was a thin white line far out in the west.

Wild fowl in multitudes we encountered on the way.
Under the leaning brows of cliffs that rose three hundred feet
in air were strata of sea gulls and clouds of sea pigeons and
big eiders. A weird medley were their wild cries and screams
the reechoing of our guns and the deep booming of the
sea.

Where we landed for sea-pigeon eggs the sea pigeons
swarmed like flies hardly an arm’s length above us. As
they came breast on, Nanook would hurl a piece of driftwood
into them, bringing down three or four birds with a single
throw.

With a gale from the west the icefields again came in, and,
rafting high along the rock masses of the coast, kept us pris-
oners. We went inland, goose-hunting among the tundra’s
tiny ponds. The geese, having shed their wing feathers,
were unable to fly. Over the spongy tundra they scattered
here and there and everywhere. Only the young men had
wind enough to run them down.

For two days we worked through every winding lane that
opened with the tides, or hauled the boat up on to the floes
as the lanes closed in again, until a providential offshore
wind finally freed us and we bowled in to a bare rock strip of

i68

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

point which proved to be Nanook’s “Culelulewak noona”
(the white whale land).

VVe dared not camp too near the bottle-necked entrance
to the whale ground, for even from a mile away the banging
of an oar against a gunwale might frighten the whales and
drive them out to sea. We camped under the lee of a cliff a
mile and a half distant, and upon its crest the men took turns
as lookout. It was two weeks to a day when a school of
some twenty, all told, came swinging in from sea. Nanook,
leading the fleet of kayakers, slowly paddled toward the
harbour’s mouth. “Harry Lauder,” carrying the Akeley
camera, and myself with the hand camera and film retorts
walked overland to the harbour head. We were hardly
more than half way over when the lookout signalled that the
whales were in. The kayakers at their fastest speed raced
for the entrance, and side by side with paddles beating gun-
wales and all the shouts and yells their lungs could stand
came slowly in. The deafening din threw the quarry into a
panic. The whales’ ear drums, Nanook had explained, are
so sensitive that sound not only frightens but hurts them.
Their snow-white bodies flashed in the sun as they came up
to blow or to rush around the small loop of the harbour’s end,
only to meet the barriers of land. Time after time they
tried to break through the kayak’s cordon, only to be driven
back again or harpooned if they came too near. For an
hour the fight kept on, until five were harpooned. With
their kayaks hitched in line, Nanook and his companions
spent the remainder of the day towing in the kill and hauling
them out on shore. Two days were consumed in cutting up
and apportioning it. With the whaleboat full of meat which

FILMS

169

Nanook was taking as presents to his people at the post, we
left for the south, all the stock of film I carried exposed on
Nanook’s last “big aggie.”

When August came Stewart, the trader, and I began
speculating as to when the once-a-year little schooner, with
its precious mail from home and news of the busy world,
would come. We thumbed through the post diaries for
dates of past arrivals and, averaging them up, made bets.
A lookout was almost constantly on the hills, for a sack of
sea biscuit was the prize for him who first should see her sails.

To poor old Nanook the world seemed empty. He hung
about my cabin, talking over films we still could make if I
would only stay on for another year. He never quite under-
stood why I should have gone to all the fuss and pother of
making the “big aggie” of him — the hunting, yes — but
surely everyone knew the Eskimo, and could anything possi-
bly be more common than dogs and sledges and snow houses?
I tried to give him an idea of the big igloos the kablunak had
for showing films. To him, the hundred and fifty of his
fellow men, as many more at Great Whale, in the distant
south, and at far-off Fort Chimo, and at Cape Wolstenholme,
were practically the population of the world. The kablu-
nak’s movie igloo, into which thousands came, was utterly
beyond his comprehension. They were many, I used to say,
like the little stones along the shore. “And will all these
kablunaks see our ‘big aggie’?” he would ask. There was
never need to answer, for incredulity was written large upon
his face.

At last came the signal from the lookout on the hill.

MY ESKIMO FRIENDS

170

Within two days I was aboard and the Annie's nose was
headed south. Nanook followed in his kayak, until the
Annie^ gathering speed, gradually drew away. I saw him
turn, still waving, toward his topek, which stood out from
the low, melancholy waste of shore — all that he called home!

Less than two years later, I received word by the once-a-
year mail that comes out of the north that Nanook was dead.
Poor old Nanook! Our “big aggie,” become “Nanook of
the North,” has gone into most of the odd corners of the
world — into the desert of the Sahara, India, Burma, Siam,
where audiences must be told that white means snow; and
more kablunaks than there are stones around the shore of
Nanook’s home have looked upon Nanook, the kindly, the
brave, the simple Eskimo.

THE END

SOCVAY PUBOC LIBRARY

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Solvay Public Library
SOLVAY, N. Y.

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